
Book Ji^_ 



ROMANTIC HISTORY 

General Editor : Martin Hume, M.A. 



TWO ENGLISH QUEENS 

AND PHILIP 



,IP 




<r 



W^O ENGLISH QUEENS 
AND PHILIP 




BY 



MARTIN HUME, M.A. 

(PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE) 
EDITOR Oj. the CALENDARS OF SPANISH STATE PAPERS PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE 



WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN PHOTOGRAVURE AND 
TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 



Con todo el tnundo guerra 
Y paz con Inglaterra 



New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

London: METHUEN & CO. 

igo8 






/ 



J 



I'^t/i^ 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Introductory (1552-1553) . . . . .1 

The Emperor and England — Death of Edward VI. — Mary and 
Renard — To capture England by marriage — Philip II. accepts the 
sacrifice — Spanish efforts to moderate the religious reaction in 
England 



CHAPTER II 

1553-1554 .... . . 32 

The Coronation of Mary — Noailles versus Renard — Mary accepts 
Philip — The marriage treaty — Alarm in London — Egmont's 
missions — Wyatt's rebellion — Attitude of Elizabeth — The coming 
of Philip — His voyage and arrival — His popular manners in 
England — Arrival at Winchester 



CHAPTER III 

^554-1555 75 

Philip's first meeting with Mary — The marriage — Discontent and 
disappointment of the Spaniards — Philip's kindness to his wife — 
Spanish descriptions of England — Philip in London — Arrival of 
Pole — PhiHp's religious policy in England — His attempts to marry 
Elizabeth to Savoy — The Emperor's war with France — Departure 
of Philip from England 



CHAPTER IV 

1555-1558 128 

Religious persecution in England — Philip's attempts to restrain it 
— His efforts to keep control of English policy — Elizabeth comes to 



/ 



viii TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHIl 

Court— Return of Philip to England — French intrigues— The ^^^^ 
English drawn into the war— St. Ouentin— Loss of Calais- 
Penury of the English treasury— Illness and death of Mary— 
Feria's approaches to Elizabeth 



CHAPTER V 

^558-1565 181 

Accession of Elizabeth— The beginning of the long duel— Feria 
urges Philip to use force— PhiHp's many difficulties— He offers his 
hand to Elizabeth— The Peace of Cateau Cambresis— The Franco- 
Spanish Alliance— Fears of a Catholic League— Philip marries a 
French Princess— English Catholics appeal to Philip— Mary Stuart 
claims the Crown of England— War with Scotland— Philip's efforts 
to effect a reconciliation— Bishop Quadra— His relations with 
Leicester— Intrigue for a Catholic reaction in England — Mary 
Stuart approaches Philip— Disgrace and death of Quadra— A war 
of tariffs— Guzman de Silva, ambassador — The interviews of 
Bayonne— Failure of the Catholic League 



^34 



CHAPTER VI 
1565-T569 

Mary Stuart marries Darnley— Their intrigues with Philip through 
Guzman— Plan to promote revolution in England in favour of Mary 
—Expulsion of the English ambassador from Spain— Recall of 
Guzman — Don Gerau de Spes ambassador — His character- 
Commences conspiring at once— His turbulent behaviour— Seizure 
of Philip's treasure in England— Indignation of de Spes— His 
imprudent and disastrous action — Alba stops trade— Strained 
relations— Proposed declaration of war against England— The 
views of Philip and Alba— The Norfolk plot— The Northern 
rebellion 



CHAPTER VII 
1570-1578 296 

Desperation of Alba— Fresh Catholic conspiracies— De Spes's 
complicity— Alba and the Ridolfi plot— Discovery— The revenge 
of John Hawkins— De Spes outwitted— His expulsion from England 
— Guaras appointed Spanish Agent— Reopening of trade— Guaras' 
intrigues with Mary Stuart and Don Juan of Austria— The plot 
discovered — Imprisonment of Guaras — Fall of Don Juan — 
Bernardino de Mendoza appointed ambassador in England 



CONTENTS ix 



CHAPTER VIII 

PAGE 
I578-I584 . . ... . . .354 

Mendoza and Elizabeth — His haughty behaviour — The French in 
Flanders — Elizabeth's approaches to Philip — The Spanish designs 
on Portugal — Renewed plots of Mary Stuart — Appeals to Philip to 
aid her in England — ^Philip's attitude towards Guise — Co-operation 
with him in Britain — The Jesuit mission — Mendoza and the Catholic 
plot in Scotland — Elizabeth aids the Portuguese Pretender — Anger 
of Mendoza — His altercation with Elizabeth — Progress of the plots 
— Collapse of Lennox — The interference of Guise in the plans — The 
jealousy between English Catholic exiles and the Scots — Develop- 
ment of the Anglo-Spanish plans and intended exclusion of Guise — 
Arrest of Francis Throckmorton — Discovery of the plot — Expulsion 
of Mendoza — Philip faces the inevitable and slowly prepares for a 
war of invasion 



CHAPTER IX 

1584-1588 416 

English Catholics verstis Scottish — Santa Cruz's proposal to conquer 
England — EnUsting the Pope — Intrigues in Rome — Mary Stuart 
and Philip — Drake's raid on Galicia — Elizabeth assumes the 
protectorate of the Netherlands — War at last inevitable — The 
preliminaries of the Armada — The Babington plot — Philip's 
consent — His distrust — Discovery — Elizabeth's fears of war — Her 
approaches to Spain — Santa Cruz's fresh proposals to invade 
England — His great plan— The Scottish Catholics try again to 
share the attack upon England — Failure of Huntly's scheme — 
Guise not allowed by Philip to interfere — Mendoza in favour of 
the Scottish plan — Philip's claims to the English crown — The 
peace negotiations — Drake's dash upon Cadiz — Parma and the 
Armada— Death of Santa Cruz— Medina Sidonia — The Armada — 
The failure and its causes — The end of the struggle to win England 



V' 





I"^ 



TWO ENGLISH QUEENS 
AND PHILIP 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

1552-1553 

The Emperor and England-Death of Edward VI.-Mary and 
Renard-To capture England by marriage-Phihp II. accepts the 
sacrifice-Spanish efforts to moderate the religious reaction m England 

y 

T an uncovered table, upon which jested a 
clock, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and 
some other trifles, there sat a prematurely 
aged man of fifty-two with a long, fair, sallow face 
and a white beard. His great, projecting nether- 
lip was cracked and sore with fever, and between 
it and the tongue there lay a fresh green leaf to 
give coolness and moisture. His hands and feet 
w?rr distorted by gout; and his fur-lined, black 
■>{j,-,il ing around a once-stalwart frame now 
pw . with sickness. On his right hand at the 
othe.. .ide of the table a stout, somewhat pursy, 
middle-aged English gendeman, with his cap in his 
hand and in an attitude of profound respect, was 




2 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

delivering a speech in Italian, to which the old 
man was listening with eager attention, now and 
again painfully raising his hand to his flat black 
velvet cap in salute when the name of King Edward 
was mentioned. It was in the little city of Landau 
in the Bavarian Palatinate, and Sir Richard Moryson, 
the English Ambassador, had ridden from Spires, 
nearly twenty miles away, that day, the 4th October, 
1552, bringing his message to the greatest potentate 
on earth, the Emperor Charles V. 
; Fate had dealt hardly with the Emperor of late, 
and the impossible task he had assumed was break- 
ing him down mentally and physically. Once again 
he had found himself faced, not only by his old 
enemy France, but by his own German Princes ; 
and solely by flight and good luck had he escaped 
capture at the hands of the Judas whom he had 
made powerful at the expense of right and justice, 
Maurice of Saxony. From sheer impotence to 
struggle further, the Emperor had been forced to 
accept the humiliating terms of the Peace of Passau 
dictated to him by the Lutheran Princes. But free 
now from danger from his own people, he had turned 
again to cope with the foreign ally of his rebel 
vassals, determined this time to make a supreme 
effort to crush his French rival utterly before his 
growing infirmities crushed him. 

As he had always done throughout his reign at 
such a juncture, he looked to England for aid. 
The insults offered by Henry VIII. to his House 
and to the Catholic faith, whose champion he was., 
had not been able to alienate the Emperor, who 
well knew that with England permanently on the 
side of France against him, the vast ambitions 



THE EMPEROR AND ENGLAND 3 

he cherished for himself, his son, and his country 
were doomed to failure ; and now, notwithstanding 
the still more aggressive Protestantism of young 
Edward VI. and his mentors, it was as necessary 
to Charles as ever it had been to secure the good- 
will of England in his struggle against France in 
defence of his own Netherlands. So long as Charles 
had been fighting his German Lutheran subjects it 
was hopeless for him to bid for Northumberland's 
help ; and one of the considerations that led him 
to accept the terms imposed upon him by Maurice 
and the Germans was that thereby he might the 
better enlist his old ally England against the mon- 
strous coalition of France, the Pope, and the Turk. 
The suggestion for an alliance had reached Northum- 
berland from Charles' sister, Mary Queen of Hun- 
gary, his Regent of the Netherlands ; and Moryson 
had received his answer from England whilst he was 
following a day's march behind the Emperor and his 
army, who were on their way from Austria to 
Flanders when Charles had fallen ill at Landau. 

Much dulcet verbiage there was in Moryson's 
address, and much vague desire expressed on the 
part of the English King — or, rather, the Duke of 
Northumberland — to join a coalition against the Turk; 
but what Charles so eagerly listened for — a declaration 
against the French — came not ; though he knew that 
the English had just then a bitter quarrel of their own 
with France about the seizure of English ships and 
cargoes by French privateers. Charles lisped and 
mumbled much at the best of times, but now that he 
had the green leaf on his lip, it was difficult for Moryson 
to understand what he said in reply to the speech, 
which, indeed, the Emperor interrupted more than once 



4 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

in his anxiety to get at the important point of it. "He 
could not forget," he said, "the love of Henry VIII. for 
him, shown at sundry times, nor betray the trust the 
late King had put in him in asking him to protect his 
young son. He would never forget the amity that for 
many years had lasted between England and his 
House, and he had perpetually tried to preserve this 
ancient friendship." Then, raising his voice and 
speaking more emphatically, he said that friend- 
ships that had long been tried and found good 
should be made much of. Charles was not a man 
to wear his heart upon his sleeve ; and his stolid 
face and leaden eyes as a rule gave no key to his 
thoughts ; but Moryson says that on this occasion 
"he did so use his eyes, so move his head and order 
his countenance, ... as I do surely think he meant 
the most of what he said. Sure am I that he is 
too wise not to wish the King's Majesty surely 
his." 

That Charles was sincere in his wish to gain 
the help of England against France on this, as 
on all other similar opportunities, did not require 
much penetration to understand ; but when Mory- 
son left the Imperial presence and came to close 
quarters with Charles's minister de Granvelle, the 
wily ecclesiastic and future Cardinal tried what 
cajolery could do the further to persuade the 
Englishman of the goodwill of the Emperor, and 
his wish for England's friendship. "He [the 
Emperor] only wished," he said, " that he found 
in the rest of the Princes the like godly mind as 
in King Edward, his good brother, and did trust 
he should be a king of as great honour as hath 
been in England this hundred years. This and a 



ENGLAND AND THE EMPEROR 5 

hundred times as much he spake with such affection 
as, if words may be thought to mean what they say, 
there can be no more wished for than is to be hoped 
for." I There was no thought yet of the young 
King's premature death ; but Northumberland had 
many bitter enemies at home, and to him it was 
a matter of policy to secure for himself a powerful 
supporter on the Continent. The Catholic and 
Spanish interest being naturally against him for 
his religious action and his treatment of the Princess 
Mary, he had always hitherto looked towards France 
as his friend ; but the maritime aggression of the 
French and ancient prejudice had aroused a bitter 
feeling against them generally in England ; and it 
behoved Northumberland at this juncture to make 
an appearance at least of conciliating the ancient 
ally of England, the Emperor-king of Spain and 
monarch of the Netherlands. To Northumberland 
in the circumstances this was a passing expediency : 
to Charles the alliance or benevolent neutrality of 
England was a permanent necessity if his cause and 
country were to prevail. 

This necessity became more pressing still three 
months after the interview just described. The 
Emperor with a demoralised and discontented army 
laid siege to Metz, which the French had captured 
from him, and after months of effort and hardship 
in the depth of winter he was obliged to retreat, 
defeated and heartsick ; already swearing that he 
would turn monk: "for fortune, like a very strumpet, 
doth reserve her favours for the young." In his 
palace at Brussels — sick, sorry, and dejected — he was 
obliged to haggle with the German Princes as to 

^ Moryson to the Council, 7th October 1552. Record Office. 



6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

the price of their aid to fight the French. His 
darling son PhiHp, they stipulated, must be separated 
from the succession to the Empire, and the dream of 
the Emperor's life to leave Philip strong enough to 
triumph where he himself had failed must be for- 
feited. The French had stirred up trouble, too, in 
the Emperor's Italian dominions ; the Turk was 
dominatinof the Mediterranean with the blessing: of 
the Christian Pope ; the Netherlands were sore and 
angry at the war taxes and the presence of marauding 
Spanish soldiery ; the Imperial ministers were at 
deadly feud with each other ; and on all sides Charles 
was surrounded by debts and difficulties. If only 
England could be prevailed upon to divert the 
French by attacking them in the Channel during 
the coming spring campaign, the tide of victory for 
the Emperor might yet be turned and France be 
rendered powerless. That, however, was the last 
thing that suited Northumberland's book. 

The continuance of the war, nevertheless, was a 
standing danger to England itself, for it would 
have been impossible for her very long to have 
stood by idly whilst the French overran Flanders ; 
and Northumberland made desperate efforts to bring 
about peace between the two antagonists. To all 
approaches in this sense the Emperor and his sister, 
the Queen- Regent of the Netherlands, could only 
point to the aggressive action and impossible demands 
of the King of France. "And," writes Moryson in 
April, 1553, "whyle all these sturres ar growing 
great in Germanie, and whyle the French King is 
plying both sides with secret aydes and unseen 
practices, th' Emperor keepyth his bed as unfyt 
to hear of the myschiefs that grow rownd about 



ENGLAND AND THE EMPEROR 7 

him, as unable to devise how to remedie them 
if they were told him." 

All through the spring, however, the Emperor's 
officers worked hard to muster his armies in Ger- 
many and Flanders to face the French and save 
the Netherlands. Northumberland still pressed upon 
both sides the mediation of the King of England in 
their quarrel, but in the midst of these negotiations 
in April, 1553, the new Imperial general, young Prince 
Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, suddenly dashed upon 
the French frontier-fortress of Th^rouenne and inflicted 
a heavy defeat upon the Emperor's enemies. North- 
umberland's new embassy to urge peace upon Charles 
found less ready response even than before, whilst the 
King of France in no wise abated his extravagant 
claims now that the Emperor was looked upon as sick 
unto death. When the English envoys at length 
gained audience of Charles in Brussels early in June, 
1553, they found him with his gouty limbs propped up, 
"looking very pale, weak, lean, and feeble," though 
his eyes were still bright and his mind clear. 
" Marry, to judge him by our sight, we must say 
that he appeareth unto us rather a man of short 
time rather than continuance." ^ 

How important the life or death of the Emperor ' 
was at that juncture to England, few people outside 
the immediate circle of Northumberland's friends fully 
understood. Already dark rumours were spreading 
abroad that the slight indisposition of the boy King 
of England was really a mortal malady. If Charles 
died first, it might easily be foreseen that the break 
up of his Empire and the confusion resulting from the 

^ Thirlby, Hoby, and Moryson to the Council. State Papers, 
Germany. 



8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

demise of his many Crowns would deprive his suc- 
cessor of the power at the critical moment to inter- 
fere with Northumberland's plans to exclude the 
Princess Mary from the throne and to perpetuate 
the Protestant regime in England under his own 
Dudley descendants. If, on the other hand, Edward 
died whilst the Emperor's power was intact, it was 
certain that such support as he could give would go 
to his cousin Mary Tudor. To Spain and Flanders 
the goodwill of England was the crucial point upon 
which their future power and prosperity turned. To 
gain that, Charles had already condoned and suffered 
much, and there was hardly any sacrifice too great for 
him if he could win it now. With Mary on the throne 
and at his bidding — for he had been her only friend in 
all her tribulations — the sympathy of her country 
would be secure to him, and he and his could face 
France with confidence. So Charles and his Ministers 
were alert for every whisper as to Edward's sickness, 
and the English envoys who were at his Court grew 
daily more apprehensive at what would happen to 
them and their master if the young King died before 
the old Emperor. 

On the 24th June Sir Philip Hoby, one of the 
English envoys in Brussels, received a visit from 
Evered, "the King's jeweller dwelling at West- 
minster," who had just come from Antwerp. In 
that city, he reported, it was current, and wagers 
laid on it, that King Edward was already dead, 
and that Mary had succeeded. To make matters 
more threatening for Northumberland's friends, it was 
further stated that the Emperor was sending to Eng- 
land with all speed three Catholic Flemish statesmen 
to be councillors of the new Queen of England. 



DEATH OF EDWARD VI 9 

Well might Hoby in his private letter to Cecil, 
written the next day, exclaim in dismay : " Pray 
God that England's wickedness may not be the 
cause of His taking away the King"; for if the 
country was to be guided by Charles's councillors, 
of whom Hoby held but a poor opinion, then good- 
bye to Northumberland's ambitions and to the 
prosperity of all his friends. ''England would go 
to utter ruin," he said, "if ruled by such men." ^ 

The three envoys sent by the Emperor to capture 
England for Spanish ends when Edward should die 
had indeed received their instructions two days before 
Hoby wrote his letter to Cecil. They were all men of 
mark — Jean de Montmorenci, Lord of Courrieres, 
Jacques de Marnix, Lord of Tholuze, both members of 
the highest Flemish nobility, and one of the Emperor's 
Masters of Requests, a keen, sagacious lawyer named 
Simon Renard. Charles had maintained a minister 
resident in London, one Schefyne, who became 
Chancellor of Brabant, but for so important a mission 
as that now in hand he was considered inadequate ; 
and in right of his experience and ability Simon 
Renard, though inferior in point of rank to his 
colleagues, became the real leader of the embassy. 
The envoys were to seek audience of Northumberland 
and Edward, and to say that, as the King of France had 
sent a secretary to visit him on account of his sickness, 
the Emperor, whose affection for him was infinitely 
greater, could do no less. All sorts of assurances of 
friendship and goodwill towards England were to 
be given, and care was to be taken in any case 
to conciliate Northumberland. " But," continue the 
instructions, "if you arrive too late, you must take 

' Sir Philip Hoby to Cecil. Hatfield Papers and Haynes. 



lo TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

counsel together and act for the best for the safety of 
our cousin the Princess Mary, and secure, if possible 
her accession to the Crown : whilst doing what you see 
necessary to exclude the French and their intrigues. 
You must endeavour also to maintain the confidence 
and good neighbourship which it is so important that 
our Flemish States and Spain should enjoy with 
England for mutual trade and intercourse ; and 
especially to prevent the French from getting their 
foot in, or gaining the ear of the men who now rule 
England, the more so if it be for the purpose of 
troubling us." ^ 

Already news had reached Flanders that North- 
umberland would endeavour to exclude Mary from the 
throne on the death of her brother ; and although the 
Emperor foresaw that in such case the life of his 
cousin would be in grave peril, especially if French aid 
were given to Northumberland, the principal efforts 
of the envoys were to be directed to assuring the 
English Government, in any case, that the Emperor 
was their real friend and not France, the ancient foe of 
England. If Northumberland and his friends feared 
that Mary would contract a foreign marriage under 
the Emperor's influence, they were to be assured that 
no such thing was thought of, and Northumberland 
was to be given to understand that any husband 
chosen by him for the Princess as future Queen would 
be willingly accepted, though the actual fulfilment of 
the promise was to be postponed as long as possible 
in order that Mary might, if she was strong enough 
later, avoid compliance with it altogether. The 
envoys, indeed, were to promise anything and every- 
thing to secure the throne for Mary. No change 
^ Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, vol. iv. 



DEATH OF EDWARD VI ii 

should be made in the government or in religion, and 
full indemnity should be given for all past acts against 
her. It is clear throughout these instructions, how- 
ever, that, much as Charles desired the accession 
of his cousin Mary, he was prepared to accept any 
solution that would enable him to remain friendly 
with England and exclude French influence from 
the country. 

Before Renard and his colleagues arrived in 
England, Schefyne wrote to the Emperor the news of 
the King's expected death, and the patent intrigues of 
Northumberland to exclude Mary from her inheri- 
tance ; and when, on the 6th July, 1553, the Imperial 
ambassadors entered London, though Northumber- 
land's officers greeted them as though all was well, 
they promptly discovered that Edward was no 
more for the world, and that everything was pre- 
pared for the elevation of Jane Grey to the English 
throne. On the day after their arrival, the 7th July, 
the ambassadors learnt secretly that Edward had 
died the previous night, and that Mary in fear for her 
life had fled to Norfolk and had resolved to proclaim 
herself Queen as soon as her brother's death was 
officially announced. In their perplexity at this 
critical state of affairs, and their dread at driving the 
ruling power of England into enmity with the 
Emperor, the envoys took the unheroic course of 
blaming Mary's bold action instead of supporting 
it. Certain it is that if the Princess had waited upon 
her Imperial kinsman's effective aid, her opportunity 
would have been missed and she would never have 
been Queen of England. She had, indeed, no one to 
thank for her crown but herself; and the attitude of 
the Imperial envoys towards her in her hour of trial 



12 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

proves once more the impossibility of the Emperor 
and his son allowing any considerations, either of 
religion or kinship, to stand in the way of their 
securing the co-operation of England to their ends. 

Renard and his colleagues were weak reeds for 
Mary to depend upon, and she did well to go her own 
way, understanding the feeling of her countrymen 
better than they did. The envoys found Mary's 
action in defying Northumberland : " Strange, 
difficult, and dangerous. . . . All the forces of the 
country are in the hands of the Duke, and the Lady 
has no hope of obtaining forces nor aid to oppose him, 
whilst her proclamation of herself as Queen will 
justify the new King and Queen in attacking her 
by force, and she will have no means of resisting 
them unless your Majesty stands by her. Considering 
your war with the French, it seems unadvisable for 
your Majesty to arouse English feeling against you, 
and the idea that the Lady will gain Englishmen 
on the orround of relisfion is vain."i Serious 
remonstrances were sent to Mary herself by the 
Imperial envoys, pointing out her danger and the 
hopelessness of her position in the face of North- 
umberland's supposed strength ; and at the same time 
they laboured hard to dissuade the Duke frorh the 
idea that they had been sent to England to sustain 
Mary's cause. 

The Emperor himself was no bolder than his 
envoys. " If you cannot draw the Duke of North- 
umberland to our cousin's cause, you may see if you 
can gain over some of the nobles by promises about 
religion or otherwise, in order to alarm the Duke into 

^ The envoys to the Emperor. Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, 
vol. iv. 



CHARLES AND MARY 13 

showing some favour to the Princess." ^ Renard and 
his colleagues had been in London five days and had 
already assumed the attitude towards Mary just 
referred to, before Secretary Petre came officially 
from Northumberland on the loth July to inform 
them of the King's death. They merely begged the 
Council to be kind to Lady Mary, although they well 
knew that she was mustering her forces and issuing 
her decrees in Norfolk, and that Jane was to be 
crowned in the Tower of London on the following 
day ; after which they feared that Mary would be 
captured and done to death as a rebel. 

All through the critical time, whilst Mary was 
sturdily asserting her rights and gathering her friends, 
the envoys of her cousin were thus paltering, in 
mortal fear of driving the new government into the 
arms of France, limiting themselves to a repetition 
of the mission originally intended for Edward, and : 
** recommending Lady Mary to them with all softness 
and modesty, without entering into any contention as 
to the succession, which would be of no use." In the 
meanwhile Northumberland's cause grew more and 
more hopeless, though the Imperial envoys did not 
even yet understand it. English Catholics and others 
came to them begging for information as to the 
Emperor's attitude, and urging him to make at 
least some declaration in his cousin's favour ; but 
all the answer they got was a mild deprecation of 
violence of any sort, and an appeal to the Emperor 
for instructions. The over-cautious ambassadors 
first began to pluck up courage when the heralds 
proclaimed in London the accession of Jane and 

^ The Emperor to the envoys. Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, 
vol. iv. 



14 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

her Dudley husband on the nth July amidst the 
silence of the frowning citizens ; but when on the 
following day, 12th July, a deputation of Jane's 
Council, Lord Cobham and Dr. Mason, came to 
inform them of the accession of the new Queen, 
and told them haughtily that their embassy had 
come to an end, as they were known to be in 
England only to help Mary, the ambassadors 
replied with bated breath and whispering humble- 
ness, and with perfect truth, that they had done 
^.nothing of the sort. Their only mission, they said, 
which they had hitherto no opportunity of carrying 
out, was to thank King Edward for his efforts to 
bring about peace, and to assure the Government 
of the Emperor's desire to be friendly with England 
in spite of French lies and intrigue. 

On the 13th July the ambassadors had their 
first audience with the Council. Northumberland, 
of course, was absent : he had just started on his 
disastrous expedition to Cambridge, already a beaten 
man in the face of Mary's growing popularity ; but 
Arundel, Shrewsbury, Pembroke, Mason, Petre, and 
others received them. Renard was the spokesman 
of the envoys, and he laboured hard, even now, to 
persuade the Englishmen of the Emperor's desire 
to banish from their minds all suspicion of his 
motives — a suspicion, he said, engendered solely 
by French misrepresentations. He was naturally 
anxious for the safety and good treatment of his 
cousin, Lady Mary, but he had no desire whatever 
to use her as a political instrument, or to promote 
her marriage with a foreigner, or indeed to interfere 
in any way with the established order of affairs in 
England. The Emperor's message was received 



CHARLES AND MARY 15 

courteously, as well it might be, for the Coun- 
cillors were already trembling in their shoes, and 
the envoys were requested to defer their departure 
from England until further instructions came from 
the Emperor — a notable change of tone since their 
interview with Cobham and Mason the day before. 
The ambassadors, however, were still as far as 
ever from understanding the real state of affairs, 
even at the date of their next letter (i6th July). 
" We consider it certain that before four days are over 
the Lady will be in the Duke's power if she has no 
force to resist him. . . . He is raising troops every- 
where and is strong on land and sea, so that we do 
not see how those who secretly hold with the Lady 
will be able or dare to declare themselves. We 
have no confirmation that the Lady is aided by so 
many people as was reported. . . . On the contrary, 
a messenger from the Lady brought us to-day the 
copy of the Council's reply to her letter to them, 
and a verbal message from her telling us that she 
saw the ruin into which she would fall unless your 
Majesty helped her." ^ If this had really been the 
case, Mary would never have been Queen of England, 
for the Emperor plainly told his envoys that, for 
an infinity of extremely sage and prudent reasons 
which he detailed at great length, he could not give 
the help that Mary hoped for. New credentials, 
indeed, were sent to them, and instructions that 
they were again to ply the Council with assurances 
that nothing was farther from the Emperor's thoughts^ 
than to interfere in any way in England. A mild 
word or two was to be introduced on behalf of Mary ; 

^ The Imperial envoys to the Emperor. Papiers d'Etat, 
vol. iv. 



i6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

but the whole object of the mission was to induce the 
English Government, whatever it might be, to 
renounce the French friendship and depend solely 
upon their ancient ally the Monarch of Spain and 
Flanders.^ 

Before these instructions reached London, Northum- 
berland's house of cards had fallen. His son, Henry 
Dudley, had in vain prayed for help from the King of 
France ; but the latter was now at grips with the 
Emperor and dared not send troops to England, 
where the dread and hatred of the French was one 
of the principal reasons of Northumberland's fall. 
The Duke himself was hopeless and helpless at Cam- 
bridge, ready to save his unworthy skin by throwing 
up his bonnet and crying, " Long live Queen Mary ! " 
when in spite of him the Princess he had just declared 
a bastard was acclaimed Queen ; whilst the miserable 
Councillors he had coerced into being his tools in 
London were tumbling over each other in their 
anxiety to disclaim him and betray the unhappy girl 
whom his ambition was to lead to an untimely death. 

On the 19th July the Earl of Shrewsbury and 
Dr. Mason came to the Imperial ambassadors in a 
very contrite mood. There was no talk of their 
embassy being ended now, no haughty reproaches 
for their supposed support to the bastard Lady Mary. 
After much hemming and hawing, the deputation of 
the Council announced to Renard and his colleagues 
that they came with glad news, which they thought 
would be welcome to the Emperor. All that the 
Council had done previously had been under the 
coercion of the wicked Duke of Northumberland, 
.whom they repudiated. They now all acknowledged 
' The Emperor to the envoys, 20th July. 



PROCLAMATION OF MARY 17 

Mary as their true Sovereign, and they had decided 
to proclaim her pubHcly that day in London. To the ' 
dehght of the Imperial envoys, but still apparently to 
their bewildered surprise at the failure of all their 
predictions, Mary was proclaimed both in the Tower 
and the City amidst the frantic joy of the people. 
Bonfires blazed, feasts were spread, wine ran freely in 
London, ^ and coins galore were scattered ; for the 
rightful Queen had come into her own at last, whilst 
the "nine-days' Queen" — the poor fated girl in the 
grim fortress that had been her only palace — found 
herself a prisoner instead of a potentate ; and the 
cowardly craven whose tool she had been was basely 
striving to win mercy, if not favour, from the proud 
Princess whom he had injured beyond forgiveness. 
Still intent, as ever, upon gaining the friendship of 
England, no matter who reigned over it, the first 
instructions of the Emperor to his envoys when he 
heard the good news of Mary's accession were to urge 
upon the new Queen the acceptance, at all events at 
first, of the status quo : not to be in a hurry to change 
anything, to bow to the decisions of Parliament, to 
practise her own religion only in private, if necessary. 
"And above all things she should be a good English- 
woman, and let people understand that she has no 
intention of acting alone and without the advice and 
co-operation of her nobles and the Parliament." An 
assurance might now be given to her of the Emperor's 
desire and intention of supporting her — as had always 
indeed been his intention, he said — and upon her, as 
formerly upon her brother, was to be urged the first 
and principal points of all — distrust of the French and 

^ Contemporary account by Antonio de Guaras. Edited by 
Garnett. 



i8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

the conviction that the real, trustworthy friend of 
England was the Sovereign of Spain and Flanders. 

T Mary was perfectly well aware that she owed her 
Crown to her own right and to the boldness of the 
action she had taken, and she was not inclined to 
accept to their full the moderating counsels of the 
Emperor, who had done so little for her in her need. 
But she also understood that her position was, as yet, 
far from stable ; and with French intrigue against her 
and in favour of the regime she had supplanted, she 
turned naturally to her powerful Spanish kinsman for 
such support as she might need, as well as for counsel. 
So anxious was Charles to consolidate her position as 
Queen, that the advice he gave her might rather have 
come from a Protestant constitutional monarch than 
from the absolute champion of Catholicism. She was 

^ urged to moderate her religious zeal, to abandon her 
intention of celebrating the obsequies of Edward with 
Catholic rites, and whilst using severity with the few 
leaders of the revolt against her, to be clement to the 
great majority, and not to begin her reign by any 
vengeful action either of her own or of the friends 
who had suffered under the rule of her brother. 
Above all, she was recommended to summon Parlia- 
ment in the old form and banish most of the foreigners, 
especially Frenchmen, of course, from her realm. 
With these sage counsels the Emperor sent Mary a 
promise that if the French attempted anything against 
her, she might depend upon the aid of Imperial troops 
under the Prince of Savoy. 
T The very first letter written by the Emperor after 
he had news of Mary's proclamation instructed Renard 
to tell the new Queen that it would be advisable for 
her to take a husband at once, and to say that the 



MARY ENTERS LONDON 19 

Emperor would support her in any choice she might 
make. There were really very few princes whom 
Mary could have chosen. If she married an English- 
man, there was none of fitting rank and faith to be her 
husband but Courtenay, whom she had just released 
from his long durance in the Tower, and the elderly 
Churchman, Cardinal Pole, both of these being of the 
blood royal of England. Mary, in violet velvet, rode 
in triumph from New Hall in Essex to the Tower of 
London on the 3rd August. A thousand velvet- 
clad courtiers followed in her train and ten thousand 
armed men formed her bodyguard. As she passed 
through the leafy lanes and into the smiling villages, 
and so to the eastern gate of her capital, no discordant 
voice reached her. Close behind her in a litter rode 
her younger sister, Elizabeth, with her fair skin and 
yellow hair, composed and self-possessed ; but, as 
Mary well knew, ready to make common cause with 
her enemies if it would serve her own ends. Before 
Mary had left New Hall the clever, courtly French 
ambassador, Antoine de Noailles, had ridden out from 
London to greet her. Noailles's task was a difficult 
one. He had done his best, almost openly, to aid 
Northumberland and exclude half-Spanish Mary from 
the throne ; indeed, the Londoners, who hated him 
and his country, were loudly proclaiming that six 
thousand armed Frenchmen had been ready to invade 
England in the interests of Queen Jane.^ But 
Noailles was supple and insinuating, and the first 
speech he made to Mary when he greeted her was an 
assurance of the devotion of his master to her and 
an offer of armed assistance if she needed it. Mary 
was polite but cool, for she knew, notwithstanding 
^ Ambassades de Noailles. vol. ii. 



20 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Noailles's charming, that she had nothing to hope for 
from France. As she entered London there rode also 
in her train the Imperial ambassadors, jealous and dis- 
trustful of the Frenchman, who they knew was trying 
to checkmate them. Beyond formal greetings in the 
presence of many watchful eyes Renard had not been 
able to obtain private conference of the Queen, who 
remained in the Tower of London awaiting her 
journey to Richmond. Mary herself, knowing who 
her friends were, was naturally anxious to have speech 
with the representatives of her Imperial cousin, to 
whom she looked for guidance, and she suggested 
that Renard should seek entrance to the Tower in 
disguise to see her.^ The ambassador, however, 
appears to have thought it safer and more dignified 
to have patience for a few days until, in the compara- 
tive freedom of Richmond, he could see the Queen 
_without attracting so niuch attention as in the Tower. 
'In the meanwhile he had been able in private con- 
versation with Paget, of the Council, to broach the 
subject of the Queen's marriage. From him he had 
learnt positively that the current rumour of the inten- 
tion of Mary to make Courtenay her Consort was 
untrue. ** She was against such a match, because 
she distrusted the English nation, knowing it to be 
treacherous and fickle, because Courtenay is too young 
and lowly, her heart being high and magnanimous. 
Besides which, if she married an Englishman, 
the children — if she had any — would not be so 
much thought of as if her husband were a foreign 
prince." 
; The Emperor's son Philip, a young widower of 

^ Renard to the Emperor. Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, 
vol. iv. 



A HUSBAND FOR MARY 21 

twenty-seven, after several years of widowhood, was 
betrothed to his cousin, the Princess of Portugal, 
whose rich dowry was sorely needed by the Emperor^ 
for the war ; but Renard well understood without 
instructions that if Mary of England could be won 
for the House of Spain, the gain would be infinitely 
greater than any Portuguese money dowry could 
bring. So he gently hinted to Paget in his talk that 
the Prince was not married yet, though the Spanish 
merchants in England had falsely reported that he 
was. Paget was doubtful. Yes, he said, no doubt 
the Queen's marriage would be the richest one in the 
world, but it was not yet time to discuss it. Never- 
theless, Renard decided when first he saw the QueeiT 
in private to mention Philip's name as if by chance, 
"so as to put the idea of such a marriage into her 
head ; for if she takes to it, she will be better able to 
convert her councillors to it than anybody else in the 
world." 

The idea once started was eagerly taken up by the 
Emperor — if, in fact, it did not originate with him — 
and no time was lost by him in preparing the ground 
on his side. He wrote to Philip as soon as Renard's 
information reached him that Mary would probably 
favour a foreign marriage, recommending him to send 
from Spain a formal embassy to congratulate Mary 
upon her accession. But to this recommendation he^"^' 
added the hint that if Philip would break off the 
Portuguese match and consent to his marriage with 
the new Queen of England it would be a master- 
stroke of policy. Charles had not seen his son for 
two years, and although he knew well that Philip was 
dutiful, yet he did not venture to press him too 
urgently. The Prince was, as Granvelle wrote to 



22 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Renard, a man of full age, with children, ^ and the 
Emperor would do nothing decisive with regard to 
the English marriage unless Philip's own inclinations 
led him to it. There was some fear on the part of 
' the Emperor that Mary might think of himself for a 
husband. To this he had no inclination. ^ He was, 
as we have seen, in declining health, and had in secret 
already made up his mind to embrace a monastic life 
as soon as he could cripple France and leave his son 
_at peace. Pending Philip's reply, Renard was in- 
' structed to keep the affair open with the Queen, 
always mentioning Philip as being the preferable 
parti, but without pledging him, "in case the Portu- 
guese affair has gone too far, ... or if the Prince's 
fancy alights elsewhere." Even Courtenay, who was 
known to be intriguing with the French ambassador, 
was not to be banned entirely, though that idea was 
to be gently discouraged ; "for if her fancy tends that 

^ He had, in fact, several children by the Lady Dona Isabel 
de Osorio, with whom he had lived since his young wife's death. 
The fact that Granvelle puts the word in the plural proves that 
this was quite recognised. 

2 In the private letter which the Emperor wrote to his son on 
the subject he says : "if the choice falls upon a foreigner, I 
think the English would rather have me than any one else, as 
they have always been well disposed towards me. But I can 
assure you that even greater dominions" (i.e., than England) 
" would not seduce me nor divert me from the very different 
intention which I hold. If, therefore, they should send and 
propose this marriage to me, I have thought that it would be 
better to suggest you, and the matter could then be carried 
through successfully. The benefits and advantages which would 
accrue are so great and notorious that they need not be 
particularised. I only place it before you for your consideration. 
Let me know at once what you think of it, so that we may act 
accordingly ; but keep it strictly secret." — MS. Simancas. 
Printed in the Retiro^ estancia y muerte del Emperador Carlos V. 



RENARD'S DIPLOMACY 23 

way she will not fail, if she be like other women, to go 
on with it, and would never forgive you if you had 
said anything against it." ^ 

When, after all, Renard was received privately by 
the Queen in the Tower on the 6th August, he slily 
introduced the idea of marriage, after all the more 
prosaic points of his instructions had been disposed of. 
At the suggestion of a foreign match, but with no 
mention of Philip, Renard says : " She laughed, not 
once only but several times, whilst she regarded me in 
a way that proved the idea to be very agreeable to 
her. She clearly made me understand that she would 
not attempt or accept an English marriage, but pre- 
ferred a foreign one, ... by which I recognised that 
she had her usual pride and inclination to speak of 
her rank and grandeur. From what I can under-" 
stand, her idea is that the Emperor should propose 
some one to her, . . . and I am in good hope that if 
his Majesty inclines to our Prince [Philip], it would be 
the most welcome piece of news that could be taken 
to her." 2 But whilst this was the case, the observant 
ambassador also recognised that the English Council ' 

^ Granvelle to Renard. Papiers d'Etat, vol, iv. 

2 Although Renard at this interview of 6th August did not, 
according to his own statement, bring forward Philip's name to 
the Queen, public rumour was already busy with it. Noailles 
three days afterwards wrote to the King of France saying that 
the Imperial ambassadors had proposed Philip to the Queen : 
" and it was not now so sure that she would marry Courtenay. 
It is thought that the effect of his presence has greatly damaged 
his reputation, although he is quite handsome and well bred." — 
" Mais la nourriture que vous, Sire, pouvez penser qu'il a pris ayant 
ete toujours ferme des son enfance dans des murailles lui a laisse 
si pen de graviti et d^ experience qui je crains heaucoup qu'il soil 
pour se conduire a telle fortune^ Combien que la commune de toute 
cette province la lui desired — Ambassades de Noailles. 



24 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

would not be so easily pleased as the middle-aged 
Princess, who for her thirty-nine years of life had 
been starved of love — she, a Tudor, true daughter of 
her father, whose passions and affections were strong ; 
she, a Queen, who had been outraged and insulted for 
years and now hungered for the vengeance upon her 
foes that was only possible with the possession of 
power such as the Imperial connection could give her. 
The French, said Renard with perfect truth, were 
leaving no stone unturned, by intrigues, bribes, and 
promises, to make the idea of a Spanish alliance 
hateful to the English people ; and if Mary's coun- 
cillors were to be gained to the Spanish side, it could 
only be done by lavish expenditure both in ready 
money and in future pledges. Gardiner, the most 
powerful of Mary's Ministers, was strongly in favour 
of his late pupil Courtenay as a Consort for the Queen, 
and even Paget and Petre, both pro-Spaniards and 
former pensioners of the Emperor, looked askance at 
a match which it was seen would be hateful to the 
great majority of the English people. 

As week followed week — for the road between 
Spain and Flanders was a long one — it is plain to see 
that Mary became somewhat restive at the delay. 
Renard saw her privately at Richmond early in 
September, and, in order to start the conversation 
on the subject, mentioned the common talk in London 
of her intended marriage with Courtenay. Mary coldly 
replied that she had never spoken to the man except 
when she pardoned him. She knew nobody in 
England whom she would care to marry. Had the 
Emperor, she asked, made up his mind about recom- 
mending any suitor to her? Renard had much to 
say about the difficulty of selecting a fitting person, 



RENARD'S DIPLOMACY 25 

though he was sure that the Emperor would do his 
best. Renard dared not go too far, for no reply had 
yet been received from Philip ; and rumours were 
current in London that his marriage with his Portu- 
guese cousin was now irrevocably settled. But Renard 
began by mentioning the various unmarried Catholic 
Princes — the Archduke of Austria, the Prince of 
Savoy, the Princes of Ferrara and Florence, and 
even the Dauphin ; to all of which Mary listened 
crossly, for she knew this was only fencing. " Of 
course, your Majesty," continued Renard, " if you think 
twenty-seven or twenty-eight too young for a husband, 
I do not know any other Princes who are not too old." 
Mary took the hint, for she knew that the age of 
Philip was twenty-seven, and she replied : " But your 
Prince is already married, I hear, to the Princess of 
Portugal." Renard said that he did not think that 
the marriage was concluded yet, though he knew that 
it had been mentioned before the war ; ^ whereupon 
Mary, apparently losing patience at so much beating 
about the bush, determined to speak more plainly. 
She was sorry, she said, that Philip should marry his 
Portuguese cousin, as they were such near relatives. 
All the Princes that Renard had mentioned to her 
were very young — she might be the mother of any of 
them. She was even twelve years older than Prince 
Philip ; besides which, the Prince would want to 
remain in Spain and his other dominions, and she 
knew how much English people objected to any 
reigning foreign Prince marrying an English 



^ The Princess in question was the daughter of Eleanor, 
sister of the Emperor, and now the widow of Francis I. of 
France. 



26 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Princess.' When her father was alive, she con- 
tinued, several proposed matches for her had fallen 
through for this reason alone ; and when the late Duke 
of Orleans was proposed to her, the affair was pre- 
vented by the antagonism which always existed 
between England and France. She hoped the 
Emperor would bear this point in mind, and not 
recommend her to marry a man she had not seen 
and spoken to in England. Renard then began 
praising Philip's good sense, judgment, and serious- 
ness. He had already a son six or seven years old, 
he said, and was wise and experienced beyond his 
years. Mary, apparently thinking she had gone far 
enough, broke into Renard's panegyrics and declared 
most emphatically that she had never felt the smart 
of what was called love, nor had she ever had a 
voluptuous thought. She had never had an idea of 
marriage until God called her to the throne, and now 
the step would be taken against her own inclination 
and on public grounds alone. 
- There need have been no misgivings as to Philip's 
attitude in the matter. Throughout his life he made 

* Renard had seen Bishop Gardiner, the Queen's principal 
minister, the day before, and had tried to draw some declaration 
from him, although he was known to be in favour of the 
Courtenay match. The Bishop said that he would not suggest 
any name to the Queen ; but if she asked his advice as to 
marrying a foreigner, he would tell her that, for the good of her 
country and her own safety, it would be better to marry an 
Englishman, as the very name of foreigner was hated by the 
English, "As for the Prince of Spain," continued Gardiner, 
"if she married him, the people would never tolerate the 
Spanish character ; which even the Flemish subjects of the 
Emperor detest ; besides which, the marriage would mean for 
England a perpetual war with France. — Papiers d'Etat de 
Granvelle, vol. iv. 



PHILIP IS WILLING 27 

of himself a martyr to his duty. Overshadowed 
always by the immensity of the task confided to 
him and his House, awed by the greatness and majesty 
of his father, he looked upon himself from youth to 
age as an instrument in the hands of the Most High 
to compass the victory of righteousness upon the 
earth as he understood it, and incidentally to exalt 
Spain to the highest place among the nations. That 
human suffering had to be endured to arrive at the 
end was only an incident : that he himself, In his 
degree, should forego his own inclinations, his ease, 
his comfort, and his pleasures in favour of the great 
objects for which he lived, was to him quite natural 
and inevitable, and he accepted the fate without 
repining. The marriage with Mary — a woman whom 
he had never seen, who was twelve years his senior 
and no beauty at best — could not have been attractive 
to him. His domestic life with Dona Isabel de Osorio 
had apparently been harmonious ; and the absence 
from Spain which the English marriage would entail 
was both inconvenient and unpleasant, whilst the 
necessary concessions in manner and demeanour to 
his wife's English subjects would, perhaps, be more 
distasteful to him than any other of the sacrifices 
imposed upon him by the match. But, as his Spanish 
contemporary biographer says, like another Isaac he 
readily submitted himself to his father's will and wrote 
without a day's delay that the Portuguese match 
might still be avoided, and he had already taken steps 
in that direction, " cheerfully and unreservedly placing 
himself in the Emperor's hands to do with him as he 
thought best in the interests of their great cause." ^ 

^ Philip wrote to his father, " If the marriage should be 
proposed for your Majesty, that would be the best course. But 



28 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Two days after the Emperor had received the 
welcome letter from his son, a swift courier was 
speeding to England with instructions to Renard 
to propose Philip, Prince of Spain, as a husband for 

^ Queen Mary. 

y The occasion was one of supreme international 
importance. Ever since Ferdinand the Catholic 
sixty years before had betrothed Mary's mother to 
the heir of Henry VII., the sovereign of Spain had 
been trying to win for his country the control of 
English policy, in order that France might be beaten 

^in the struggle for the hegemony of Europe. The 

tremendous cataclysm of the Reformation, personal 

ambitions, the weakness and sensuality of Henry VIII., 

and unexpected deaths, had again and again frustrated 

the design. England had more than once fought by 

the side of France in the great Continental duel, and 

the English friendship upon which the House of 

Spain was forced to depend as one of the main 

elements of success, had been for all those sixty years 

an unstable quantity, though generally on the side of 

its traditional ally. But what was necessary for 

Charles and his son was a friendship that could be 

counted upon in all circumstances — an alliance that 

no bribes nor blandishments of Frenchmen and 

Lutherans could shake ; and for the first time this 

seemed possible of attainment if by the marriage of 

Philip and Mary the crowns of England, Spain, and 

Flanders could rest upon the same brows. 

if your Majesty persists in the view you state to me in your 
letter and you think better to treat of the marriage for me, you 
know already that as an entirely obedient son I have no other 
will than yours, and above all on an affair of this importance. 
I therefore leave it to your Majesty to act as you deem best." — 
MS. Simancas. Retiro estancia y muerte del Emperador, etc. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MATCH 29 

To Mary of England, too, the match with her 
Spanish second cousin had more than a sentimental 
interest, strong as that was with her. The EngHsh 
people had rallied to her cause under the influence of 
their recognition of her legal right to the throne, and 
their detestation of Northumberland and his French 
friends ; but Protestantism was undoubtedly strong, 
especially in London and the Eastern Counties, which 
had first acclaimed the new Queen ; and it was evident 
to Mary that if she was to impose her faith upon the 
country, as she was determined to do, even against the 
advice of the Emperor, she must be able to depend 
upon some force independent of her own people to 
aid or support her at a pinch. France, of course, 
being out of the question for her, she could only look 
to a Spanish match to serve her turn. Mary shut her 
eyes obstinately to the vast change that had come over 
her country in the last thirty years. She believed, as 
did the Churchmen throughout Europe, that she only 
had to decree a return to the state of affairs prior to 
her father's apostasy for the country to accept the 
change without demur. Pole was for extreme measures 
at once, and so, of course, was the Pope, Julius II. ; but 
the Emperor, who in the supposed cause of religion 
was always ready to postpone religious considera- 
tions for politics, continued to advise Mary through 
Renard to go slowly and to avoid incensing her people 
until at least she was strong enough to coerce them. 
The marriage of Philip with the Queen therefore 
seemed to hold out to both contracting parties the 
ideal opportunity of attaining their great desire — in the 
one case the control of English policy to the detriment 
of France, and in the other the increment of strength 

o 

necessary to force England once more into the fold of 
the Church. 



30 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Thenceforward for forty-five years Philip of Spain 
strove, often in almost impossible circumstances, to 
attain this end. There was no instrumentality left 
untried by him to secure it. Marriage, and proposals 
of marriage, wars, and threats of wars, arrogance, 
humility, diplomacy, bribery, subornation of treason 
and murder, were some of the means to which Philip in 
his long struggle appealed ; for to him and his cause 
„and country it was a matter of life and death ; and it is 
my object to set forth in the following chapters from 
contemporary sources the story of this long series of 
efforts on the part of the Spanish King to win the 
support of England by fair means or foul. To regard 
Philip as a fiend, or even as a bad man, because in 
the cause of this life-struggle of his he assailed England 
with weapons that would now be rejected by any right- 
thinking statesman, would be unjust. The ethics of 
the time were widely different from those prevalent 
to-day ; the supposed interest of the State was in- 
finitely greater in proportion to the lives of individuals 
that is at present the case, whilst the assumed interests 
of religion — or, rather, of the orthodox Church — were 
considered by Philip to be so overwhelming as to 
condone any action necessary to serve them, no matter 
how criminal it would be if employed for other ends. 
No doubt, in the view of the present day, Philip 
blinded himself to a sense of right and wrong in his 
zeal to serve the cause for which he lived, namely, the 
dominance of Catholicism for the temporal benefit of 
Spain. But to him there was no wrong if it was done 
by his orders in the cause which he believed to be that 
ojf righteousness. Sacrifice and suffering seemed to 
him, as to most Spaniards of his day, a natural and 
necessary preparation for spiritual exaltation and 



PHILIP'S OBJECTS 31 

triumph ; and whilst he never flinched from inflicting 
suflering upon others, though naturally he was a tender- 
hearted man, he never spared himself in the same 
cause. Throughout his long life he made himself a 
martyr to what he conceived to be his duty ; a slow, 
laborious, unimaginative, morbidly conscientious man, 
a good son, a good husband, and, according to his 
lights, a good father; kind and indulgent to his 
servants, patient under adversity and humble in 
success : indeed, a man endowed with most of the 
elements of righteousness ; and yet with a sense of 
right so blunted by his zeal as to think that he might 
do God's work with the weapons of the devil, and turri^ 
enemies into friends by fear. How these principles as 
applied to England ended in failure, it is the purpose 
of the present book to tell. 



CHAPTER II 
1553-1554 

The Coronation of Mary — Noailles versus Renard — Mary accepts 
Philip — The marriage treaty — Alarm in London — Egmont's missions 
— Wyatt's rebellion — Attitude of Elizabeth — The coming of Philip — 
His voyage and arrival — His popular manners in England — Arrival at 
Winchester 

ALL London was ringing with preparations 
for the coming pageant of the Queen's 
coronation. Fenchurch, Gracechurch, and 
Leadenhall, Cornhill, Chepe, and Saint Paul's were 
erecting the scaffoldings for their triumphs, repainting 
and gilding gable ends and pinnacles, and trimming 
forth their fine stuffs and liveries in honour of the 
great day when the Queen was to ride in state from 
..the Tower to Westminster, i Away across the fields 
in the little sylvan palace of Saint James's, Mary sat 
under her canopy in her audience chamber one day in 
late September, surrounded by courtiers, all, like the 
Queen herself, in a blaze of magnificence ; for the 
prim Puritanism of the late reign had been banished as 
savouring of Reform, and the splendour of King Henry 
was being copied by his daughter. To one man alone 
had Mary somewhat sourly prescribed modesty in 
attire, and that was to Courtenay. The dissoluteness 

^ A curious account of these preparations will be found in 
Machyn's Diary. 

32 



HOPES AND FEARS 33 

of this young man of twenty-six, who had never before 
been free since his childhood, had already shocked the 
austerely virtuous Mary, and had made his chances of 
winning her hand more impossible than ever. But 
neither she nor those around her could fail to see that 
the cunning Frenchman Noailles was still ostentatiously 
feasting and honouring him, and already the talk of 
the French party at Court was coupling the names of 
Courtenay and the Princess Elizabeth in a way that 
boded ill to Mary's peace of mind. Courtenay had 
ordered a oforg^eous suit of blue velvet covered with 
gold for the coming ceremony ; but blue was the colour 
the Queen had chosen for her own outer garb, and she 
had no intention of allowing so much bravery to the 
man she knew was being made the tool of her enemies 
to injure her, and Courtenay was ordered to put his_ 
finery aside and wear more modest raiment. At the 
public audience Renard brought forward to present 
to the Queen two great Spanish nobles — Don Diego 
Hurtado de Mendoza and Don Diego de Geneda — 
who were on their way from Flanders to Spain, the 
latter a member of Philip's household. As the two 
gentlemen in their distinctive Spanish garb and with 
national gravity were led forward for presentation to 
the Queen, many scowling brows were bent upon them ; 
for although the matter was supposed to be so secret, 
the talk of the Spanish marriage was already common 
at Court ; and Noailles, in the deepest chagrin at the 
way things were tending, noticed that Don Diego de 
Geneda on this occasion had whispered conference 
with the Queen, unheard even by his colleague or by 
the Imperial ambassador. ^ 

^ Ambassades de Noailles, vol. ii. Noailles, in describing the 
scene to the King of France, says that when de Geneda entered 

D 



34 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

'1 Whatever French gold or interest could effect to 
alarm people at the idea of the coming of a Spanish 
Consort was done. Stories of the terrible rule of the 
Inquisition in Spain, and of the pride and cruelty of 
Spaniards generally, were spread industriously by the 
agents of Noailles, and by the day fixed for the 
Queen's state procession to Westminster, the 30th 
of September, 1553, London was almost in a panic 
of fear. The Queen had come in with promises of 
toleration, and already the zeal of the Churchmen and 
her own had belied her people's hope for religious 
peace. Parliament had been summoned for the 5 th 
October, specially for the purpose of restoring England 
to the orthodox Church ; Cardinal Pole was known to 
be coming to the land of his fathers as the Legate of 
the Pope to receive the submission of England to 
the Power which King Henry had flouted so con- 
temptuously ; and already the dungeons in the Tower 

^ were being filled by the prelates of the newer ritual. 

-r All the dazzling magnificence that accompanied 
the passage of the Queen through London from the 
Tower to Westminster, on the last day of September — 
all the official greetings, the frequent pageants at the 
street corners, and the wonder of the multitude at the 
rare show of sumptuous garb — could not banish the 
dread thought amidst the crowd that, perhaps, all this 
bravery was only a prelude to a Spanish domination 
over England. The nobles who rode in Mary's train 
and filled the great Court offices in her household had 

the boat that was to convey him down the Thames on his way 
to Spain, he announced that Prince Phihp would visit Queen 
Mary in the following March on his way to Flanders ; and 
Noailles advises the King of France to muster his ships in 
the Channel to prevent the Prince's passage. 



HOPES AND FEARS 35 

most of them been enriched by the plunder of the 
monastic lands, and had their own reasons for dread- 
ing a return of the old order in its extreme form ; 
though they did not know as yet that the Spanish 
Consort, whose advent they feared so much, would be 
the great modifying influence in their favour. French- 
men and Venetians joined the alarmed Englishmen in 
their apprehensions of the coming change, but the few 
Spaniards in London were jubilant. One Spanish 
resident, I who described the splendid show for the 
benefit of a noble patron in Spain, thus writes with 
reference to the match : "If the Lord vouchsafed us 
to behold this glorious day, what great advantage 
would befall our Spain in holding the Frenchmen 
in check, by the union of these kingdoms with his 
Majesty's dominions. And were it only to preserve 
the States of Flanders, surely the Emperor and son 
must greatly desire it, for, as your Lordship knows 
well, the day that the Emperor dies the Low 
Countries will be in peril of attack from the French 
or of a German invasion under French auspices, help 
from Spain being so remote, and Flanders itself not 
being free from suspicion of revolt on the ground of 
religion or from the disaffection of the people towards 
Spaniards. It would be most advantageous, too, to 
Spain, for should aught happen to the Prince's son 
(Don Carlos), the son born here would be King of 
both countries, which would be a good thing for the 
English too. ... All the Catholics here would lift 
up their hands to God, for they love their country and 
the Queen, and especially Spain, for the sake of the 
good Queen Katharine ; and the goodly here are so 

^ Antonio de Guaras. 



36 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

many that there are a hundred Catholics for every 
four heretics." 
'; With these mixed hopes and fears amidst the 
multitude, there went a general trust in, and affection 
for, the Queen personally. She had been illtreated so 
long, as the people knew ; she had grown faded and 
middle-aged under unjust oppression, and she was a 
true Royal Princess descended on both sides from 
kings of highest lineage. So when at the Abbey next 
day, I St October, during the interminable ceremony 
of the coronation, Gardiner led the Queen, in her 
crimson velvet and ermine, to the four corners of the 
dais and called in a loud voice, "Is this the true heir 
to this realm ? " there was no hesitation, and all the 
lieges shouted as if with one voice, " Yea ! yea ! God 
save the Queen ! " ^ 

Parliament met on the 5th October. The Catholics 
in the country were unquestionably in a majority, 
though not so great, probably, as in the ratio of twenty- 
five to one, as the Spaniards asserted ; and Mary had no 
difificulty in obtaining the repeal of all the anti- Papal 
„ laws which severed England from Rome. Gardiner 
■^ was willing enough to aid the Queen in this ; but, 
prompted by Noailles, he managed dexterously to 
get the House of Commons to vote an Address to the 
Queen, praying her not to marry a foreigner. This, 

^ Antonio de Guaras, who was present in the Abbey. It was 
noticed by the Imperial ambassadors that Princess Elizabeth, 
who at the ceremony took the place due to a Royal Princess, 
with Anne of Cleves, exchanged significant glances with Noailles 
whenever she met him. In the course of the day she com- 
plained to the French ambassador of the weight of the coronet 
she was wearing. "Patience!" was his reply, "it will soon 
produce a better one." — Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, i. 
■ p. 436. 



DREAD OF A SPANISH MATCH 37 

it is true, voiced a very general feeling in the country, 
but the Queen had now (November) quite made up* 
her mind ; for she had seen a portrait of Philip by 
Titian, and had fairly fallen in love with the young, 
fresh-coloured man with the curly, yellow beard who 
was asking for her hand. So in a rage, and after 
much delay, Mary received the deputation of the 
Commons led by the Speaker. " This is one of the 
Chancellor's tricks," she muttered, "and I will be 
equal with him for it." Then haughtily addressing 
the deputation, she rebuked their presumption in 
attempting to dictate to her on such a matter, and 
said that if private persons were allowed to choose 
mates for themselves, surely sovereigns were not to 
be less privileged. This was the true Tudor attitude 
towards the representatives of the people ; and the 
Queen, having legalised her religious changes, promptly 
dissolved Parliament. 

Watchful eyes followed Renard everywhere. The 
Queen's Council, with the exception of Paget, Arundel, 
and Petre, looked askance at him ; French and 
Venetian spies at Court reported his every movement ; 
and his own colleagues were bitterly jealous of him, as 
the marriage negotiation had been kept exclusively in 
his hands. For many days he could obtain no private ' 
access to Mary for the purpose of giving her the 
Emperor's message ; but at last, by Paget's manage- ^ 
ment, on the loth October, he was introduced secretly ' 
into the Queen's presence at Westminster. The *^-^^ 
Emperor deplored, said Renard, that his age and 
infirmities prevented him from offering his own hand 
in marriage to his cousin, as he would have wished ; 
but that being impossible, he begged her to accept his 
only and beloved son as her husband. To the chagrin 



38 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

of Renard, Mary was now full of hesitation. What 
would her people say, and how could her Council be 
persuaded? She feared that when Philip succeeded 
his father, his many other realms would occupy the 
whole of his time, and that he would never be able to 
stay in England. Was Renard, moreover, quite sure 
of his character.'* He could not be so wise as the 
Emperor, and he was very young for her. Of course 
she would obey her husband, but he must not think 
for a moment that she would allow him to rule her 
State, nor could she give any offices to foreigners ; 
and she threw out a strong hint that perhaps Philip's 
Austrian cousin, Maximilian, would be a better hus- 
band for her, as she was absolutely free, and she had 
heard the Archduke was considered wise. Besides, 
if Philip was voluptuous in his ideas, she had no desire 
for anything of the sort at her age. 

All these objections were, no doubt, only a display 
of becoming maiden modesty, but they somewhat dis- 
turbed Renard. He painted to her in lurid colours 
the enmities by which she was surrounded, and the 
dangers that threatened her — the intrigues of the 
French with Courtenay and Elizabeth, the menacing 
attitude of the Protestant party in the provinces — and 
Mary answered as best she might, asking Renard 
at last to put in writing the arguments he urged in 
Javour of her marriage with Philip. Four days later 
he saw her again, and this time her hesitation took a 
more personal form. With tears in her eyes she 
seized the ambassador's hands and conjured him to 
tell her truly whether Philip was so moderate, settled, 
and well-behaved as he said. On his life and honour 
the ambassador protested that he was, but still the 
perplexed Queen was unconvinced. Jf she could 




PHILIP II AT THE AGE OF 2i 

FROM THE PAINTING BY TITIAN IN THE PRADO MUSEUM 



MARY ACCEPTS PHILIP 39 

only have seen the Prince first, she said, she would 
be better able to judge. That, the ambassador gently- 
told her, was not possible ; but a good portrait of him 
could be sent to her, and with this she was obliged to_ 
be content.^ 

It was only after long hesitation and prayerful 
searching of heart that Mary finally decided to carry 
through her marriage, in the face of the almost 
universal opposition of her people. She undoubtedly 
yearned for the support of a husband in her difficult 
position, and naturally hoped for a son who should 
carry on her tradition of a Catholic England. She 
was of affectionate disposition, and for all her modest 
assurance to Renard that she had never felt the 
promptings of the flesh, there is nothing unbecoming 
in believing that the sight of her cousin's portrait had 
lit up the feeling of love in her heart where natural 
affection had been suppressed for so long. But, 
withal, her principal desire for the match and her 
determination to effect it were mainly prompted by 
public considerations. The intrigues of the French 
with the Protestant elements in the country, and the 
almost open way in which Noailles was playing off 
Courtenay and Elizabeth against her, had convinced 
Mary that France was her enemy. The only force 
in Europe strong enough to resist France was the 
Emperor ; and unless the Queen could depend 
absolutely upon his support, it was evident that sooner 
or later the Protestant element in England with_ 
French aid would oust her from the throne — probably 
in favour of the young Queen of Scots, her cousin, 
already betrothed to the heir of France. 

^ The details of these interesting interviews are in Renard's 
Letters, Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, vol. i. 



40 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Motives personal, religious, and political, therefore 
all dictated to Mary the absolute necessity of her 
prompt marriage with Philip ; and, as we have already 
seen, the motives of the Emperor and his son for the 
marriage were equally strong. Some of Mary's 

^ Council — especially Arundel, Paget, and Petre — were 
first won over, for they were in the Emperor's pay 
before ; and when Gardiner saw that the tide was too 
strong for him to resist, he also accepted the inevitable 
with the best grace he could. But when he had to be 
consulted on the terms of the marriage treaty, he drove 
as hard a bargain as possible ; for he, and, it is just to 
say, most of his colleagues also, were determined that 
the marriage should not mean the political subjugation 
of England by Spain. On the 31st October, Sunday 

1 evening, Mary summoned Renard to her oratory, 
where she received him, attended only by her devoted 
nurse, Mrs. Clarencius. Her eyes were red with 
weeping, and she told the ambassador that for days 
she had been sleepless, praying for guidance as to the 
choice of a husband. " My last resource in all my 
difficulties," she said, " is the Holy Sacrament, and as 
it is even now displayed upon this altar, I will appeal 
to it for counsel." Then kneeling, as did Renard and 
Mrs. Clarencius by her side, she recited with whispered 
fervour the Veni Creator Spiritus. After a short 
period of silent meditation she rose, calm and self- 
possessed, and told the ambassador that her mind w^as 
now made up : he, Renard, should be her father con- 
fessor. She had consulted some of her Councillors, 
and herself had pondered deeply upon the subject ; 
and now, bearing in mind what she had been told of 
Philip's good qualities, she prayed the Emperor to 
accept her as a daughter, to be indulgent with her, 



MARY'S PLEDGE 41 

and to consent to the conditions which her Councillors 
declared would be necessary for the welfare of her 
realm. She hoped that henceforward the Emperor 
would be doubly a father to her, and Philip a good 
husband. Then with all solemnity she approached 
the altar and, with her hand upon the gospel before 
the Sacred Presence, swore to marry Philip of Spain 
and make him a good wife. God had now sent her 
light, she said, after she had wavered long. No man_ 
but Philip should be her husband. ^ ^ 

Whilst Renard and the Council were fighting hard ' 
over every point of the marriage treaty, Noailles 
and the Venetian ambassadors were busy intriguing 
against it, entertaining Courtenay constantly, and 
doine their best to draw cautious Elizabeth into 
their plots. The muttering of coming trouble sounded 
on all sides — Mary, jealous and distrustful of Eliza- 
beth, whose illegitimacy she w^as determined to assert; 
the Protestant elements in the Court and country 
already in a ferment, thanks largely to French incite- 
ment, and disaffection showing itself by partial dis;^ 
turbances in various parts of the country. Religious 
persecution, too, began to raise its head. Cranmer 
and Ridley were condemned to death, as were Lady 
Jane Grey and the three sons of Northumberland ; 
whilst the Emperor, determined for his part to avoid 
exacerbating the evil, had, to the great indignation 
of the Pope and the Churchmen, almost violently for- 
bidden Pole to go to England with his extreme Papal 



^ Renard to the Emperor, 31st October. Record Office, _ 
Brussels Transcripts. Mary had apparently waited until the i 
Acts had passed declaring her mother's marriage legal. This^ 
was effected on the 28th October. 



42 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

mission, at least until the ultimate control of it had 
passed into the Emperor's own politic hands. 

] At length, by the end of the year, the hard terms 
of the treaty were drafted. Renard had done his 
best, and so had the Imperial ministers in Flanders; 
but Gardiner had been firm, and the conditions were 
a bitter dose for Spanish pride to swallow ; for, as 
they stood, they bade fair to deprive the bridegroom's 
country of the only benefit to be derived from the 
marriage — namely, control of the policy and resources 
of England. The Consort was to have no rule in the 
country, and none of his countrymen were to hold 
office of any sort ; the Queen was to receive a jointure 
of 30,000 ducats a year from Flanders ; and the issue 
of the marriage, if any, should, failing Philip's only 
son Carlos, succeed to all his Crowns, as well as to 
England ; whilst in the case of Mary's death, the Con- 
sort was to have no hold whatever upon her country, 
nor was he to take the Queen or her children out of 
England without the consent of the Council. These 
and many similar provisions fenced round the autho- 
rity of the Consort so completely as to deprive him 
of any direct political power in England ; but Charles, 
confident in Mary's secret promises to Renard that, 
notwithstanding the conditions, the will of the Em- 
peror should prevail in England after the marriage, ^ 
determined to make the best of it, and to gain the 
stubborn islanders by his son's charming, if they were 

jiot to be won by a diplomatic document. 

Noailles grew daily more bitter, and almost came 
to blows with Paget on the subject of the marriage, 

^ The Emperor to his son, 21st January, 1554, asking him to 
ratify the treaty, notwithstanding the hardness of the con-r 
ditions. MSS. Simancas, Estado 808. 



EGMONT COMES TO LONDON 43 

but it became clear even to him now that he had 
been beaten, and that in future England and the 
Emperor would make common cause against France._^ 
A pompous Flemish embassy, headed by the splendid 
young Count of Egmont, was known to be on its way 
across to ratify the marriage treaty in the name of 
the Emperor ; and Noailles took care that all London 
should be in a fever of apprehension at their coming. 
On the I St January a great retinue of servants with 
the baggage of the ambassadors rode through Lon- 
don to Durham House in the Strand, where Egmont 
and his suite were to be lodged. Thick snow lay 
upon the ground, and as the foreigners, with their 
long line of pack-horses, passed through the narrow 
lanes of the old city, the very street-boys pelted them 
with snowballs, ** so hatfull was the sight of ther_ 
coming in to theym."^ 

The next day, at the Tower Stairs, a gallant com- 
pany of courtiers, headed by Sir Anthony Browne, 
in the gorgeous garb he loved so well, awaited the 
coming of the Emperor's representatives, whilst the 
guns on the Tower overhead boomed out their salu- 
tation. Egmont, the first of the Flemish nobles, was 
accompanied by Montmorenci, Sieur de Courrieres, 
who had formerly come with Renard to England, 
as well as by several other high Imperial function- 
aries ; and they were escorted by Lord William 
Howard, from Calais, and by Lord Cobham, from 
Dover, as Lieutenant of Kent. As the gallant em- 
bassy of eighty finely clad gentlemen pranced out of 
the Tower Gate, they were affectionately greeted by 
Courtenay, Hastings, and Strange on Tower Hill, 
and led through the City in state, though " the ; 
' Queen Jane and Queen Mary. 



44 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

people," we are told, " nothing rejoysing, helde 
downe their heddes sorrowfully." ^ Nothing was 
left undone by Mary and her Court to show honour 
to the guests ; and banquet followed banquet, whilst 
Egmont unsuccessfully strove to modify the terms of 
Jtjie treaty. Renard tells in a letter to the Emperor 
fof a banquet given to the ambassadors by the Queen 
on the 6th January,- after which a little scene took 
place which well illustrates the free manners of the 
time. "And towards the end of the dinner the Lord 
Admiral [Howard], who had dined in an adjoining 
chamber, came in and stood before her [the Queen], 
who seemed pensive. He said something to her in 
English, and then turning to us, asked us whether 
we would like to know what he had said. Although 
her Majesty did her best to prevent him from trans- 
lating it to us, he went on and said that he had 
wished that his Highness [Philip] had been seated 
there by her side, pointing to her right, in order to 
banish her melancholy. She blushed at this and 
asked why he said it, to which he replied that he was 
sure she was not cross and liked to hear it ; whereupon 
the Queen and every one else laughed, and it all went 
_^pff in good part." 

The day after this entertainment (7th January, 
1554), Egmont wrote an urgent letter to Prince 
Philip, praying him to hasten his coming to claim 
his bride. The treaty, he says, has now been agreed 
to with only a word or two changed, and will be 
signed in two days. It is clear from this letter that 
Egmont foresaw the trouble that was looming. The 
nobility, he said, had received them better than he 

^ Queen Jane and Queen Mary. 

= Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, vol. i. 979. 



THE MARRIAGE TREATY 



;;?.- -^.t 
i':^-'- .'/• 



had expected. " But as for the people, they are ; 
uncertain. We will advise the Queen to raise forces 
to prevent any hostile movement, which would not 
be extraordinary, for these people are very unstable. 
... It is of the utmost importance that your High- 
ness should come without delay. I hear that the 
French are arming strongly in Normandy and Brit- 
tany. ... I beseech you humbly to consider how 
urgent it is that you come hither at once, for many 
reasons which I hope to lay before you verbally soon. 
Besides this, I should like your Highness to know 
that the Emperor has not provided us with a sou to 
spend on necessary presents. More can be done 
here with money than anywhere else in the world.''^ 

The hollow affectation of keeping the Queen's ^ 
marriage secret could not be continued after the 
treaty was signed, and on the 13th January Gar- 
diner, with the best countenance he could command, 
made an oration in the Presence Chamber of the 
Palace of Westminster before the assembled lords 
and courtiers, declaring the Queen's intention to marry 
the Prince of Spain "in most godly, lawful matri- 
monye : and further that she should have for her 
joynter xxx""' duckets by the yere, with all the Lowe 
Countries of Flanders ; and that the issue betweene 
them two lawfully begotten shoulde yf there be any, 
be heir as well to the Kingdom of Spayne as also to 
the sayde Lowe Country. He declared, farther, that 
"we were much bounden to thancke God that so noble, 
worthye and famouse a prince would vouchsaff so to 
humble himself in this maryadge to take upon him 
rather as a subject than otherwise : and that the 
Quene should rule all things as nowe : and that there 
^ Documentos Ineditos. vol. iii. 



46 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

should be of the Council no Spanyard, nether should 
have rule or office in the quene's house or elsewhere 
in England nor have custody of any fortes or cas- 
, tells." I Gardiner made the best of it ; but the bare 
fact of the announcement being officially made set 
light to the tinder which Noailles and his allies had 
so carefully prepared. When, on the following day, 
Gardiner made a similar announcement to the Lord 
Mayor and Aldermen, Noailles had seen enough to 
justify him in sending off a special courier ^pst-haste 
to his master in France. " The nobles and com-^ 
* monalty declare," he wrote, "that they will never tole- 
rate the Prince of Spain for their King. They would 
rather die fighting against him than obey him, and 
will defend their liberties by force before they will 
submit to such servitude. They are making ready 
to rise in arms any day and expel this Queen, who 
they now see is unworthy of the Crown and as she 
had twice broken her promise to them after they had 
raised her to the position she occupies. First, in 
changing the religion after she had promised them 
toleration ; and, secondly, in taking a foreign husband 
.although she had promised that she would not."^ In 
"T a few days the result of all this excitement was seen. 
Carew and his friends and kin in the west, depending 
upon poor feeble Courtenay's open co-operation, rose 
in revolt. Rumours ran that French troops were on 
the way across to aid him. But Courtenay was a 
reed easily broken, and allowed Gardiner to frighten 
him into alarmed submission, whilst Elizabeth, closely 
watched at Ashridge, was too cunning to be drawn 
into open complicity by Noailles's intrigues ; though 

^ Queen Jane and Queen Mary. 

* Ambassades de Noailles, Instruction a Lamarque, vol. iii. 



WYATT'S REBELLION 47 

the Emperor and Renard were urging Mary to put 
her sister well out of harm's way in prison. 

And then came the most perilous movement of 
all — that of the men of Kent under Wyatt. From 
the 26th January to the 3rd February Mary's 
crown was not worth a day's purchase ; for, though 
the cry of the rebels was only against the Spanish 
marriage, the Queen knew full well that she must now 
stand or fall by that. And she stood manfully when 
many of her courtiers were distraught by fear and 
ready to desert her at a moment's notice. Whilst 
Wyatt and his growing host swept triumphantly 
onward from Rochester Bridge to Blackheath, and 
so to Southwark, the Council were wrangling. 
Should the Queen retire to the Tower or should 
she fly to the country ; should she believe what 
the friends of the French faction urged, that the 
only safe place for her was Calais, where she could 
claim the Emperor's protection.-* Mary, almost alone, 
was undismayed. She sent word privately to Renard 
that for their own safety's sake the other Imperial 
ambassadors should return home, but that she had 
no intention of backing out of the marriage or of 
leaving London, although she might temporise with 
Wyatt whilst she mustered her forces.^ Riding to 
Guildhall, stern and sorrowful but unafraid, she made 
a stirring oration to the citizens ; and although many 
were in favour of Wyatt, London Bridge was held 
firmly by the Queen's friends, until the rebel force 
began to melt away discouraged at the delay. 

If Wyatt had struck promptly, he would probably 
have won ; but loath to shed blood and to use arms 
openly against the Crown, he lingered in Bermondsey, 
^ Documentos Ineditos, iii. 



48 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

hoping for the declaration of the citizens of London 
in his favour, until it was too late. Then came the 
ignominious march through the mire to Kingston 
Bridge, and the footsore, famished, and rain-soaked 
crew tramping through the night into London, to be 
beaten almost without effort by those who, if they 
had shown a fine front, would have joined them. 
Vengeance promptly fell upon the offenders. The 
j scaffolds at the street corners with their dangling 
corpses taught the common people that treason was 
a dangerous game to play ; the block in the Tower 
was soaked with the blood of Greys and Dudleys 
and many of their noble friends, and Elizabeth was 
no longer bidden courteously to join her sister at 
Court, but was sternly, if ceremoniously, brought to 
London, dangerously ill though she seemed to be 
(22nd February). And, as the young Princess 
passed through the silent, sorrowful crowd that 
greeted her, making, as she did, an appeal to their 
sympathies by her proud, pale face and her snow- 
white garments, the Londoners in their hearts felt that 
Elizabeth was their champion against the Spaniard, 
,_whose coming they feared so much. On the same 
day (Ash Wednesday, 7th February) that poor 
Wyatt's draggled host toiled up to Ludgate, there 
to meet final failure and the shallows, Renard urpfed 
'^the Queen to make an end of Elizabeth and 
Courtenay ; and the Count of Egmont was already 
hurrying to England with advice from the Emperor 
to the same effect ; but Mary, who allowed herself to 
be drawn into extreme severity against those who had 
openly conspired against her crown, asserted her own 
will in the matter of her sister, whose countenance of 
the French ambassador's intrigues was amply proved 



OPPOSITION CRUSHED 49 

by Wyatt's avowals and the seizure of Noailles's letters 
at Gravesend. Thus whilst Courtenay once more 
found himself in the Tower a prisoner, Elizabeth was 
at first only secluded in her sister's palace at Whitehall^ 

A perusal of the letters of Renard and Noailles, andT 
the evidence given by Wyatt himself, leaves no 
shadow of doubt that Elizabeth and Courtenay were 
accomplices in the series of risings that, with French 
support, were intended to frustrate the Spanish match; 
and, although Froude and other English historians 
have done their best to exonerate them, Mary's ■ 
clemency to her sister on this occasion is at least 
entitled to a word of praise, considering the great 
provocation she had suffered at her hand^. When 
at last Elizabeth was sent to the Tower, in March, 
it was only because Mary was about to absent herself 
from the capital for a time ; and it was, of course, 
impossible to leave the disaffected Princess, beloved 
as she was by the Londoners, practically at liberty in 
their midst. Thus the open enemies of the marriage 
were silenced ; Wyatt and his accomplices, as well as 
the Greys and Dudleys, were dead or doomed, 
Noailles was found out and raging impotently, 
Courtenay and Elizabeth behind the bars, and the 
Carews and their West-country friends refugees in 
France. 

When, therefore, on the 2nd March, 1554, Egmont 
again arrived in London, with the Bulls, powers, and 
other formal documents necessary for the solemn 
betrothal, it seemed as if all would now run smoothly. 
Renard, it is true, always anxious to augment the 
importance of Philip, gravely raised the question 
before the Queen and Council whether it would be 
safe to bring the Prince to England in the circum- 



50 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

stances ; because, he said, if there was to be any risk 
to either the Queen or her betrothed, it might be 
better to abandon the match. But whilst Mary- 
declared that for the world she would have no harm 
happen to Philip, " neither she nor her Council saw 
any means or danger that should cause the postpone- 
ment of a marriage so beneficial and honourable. 
Thank God, the heretics and rebels were imprisoned, 
their conspiracy discovered and proved, and in a 
short time exemplary punishment would be inflicted 
upon them ! For the future the Queen would see 
to it that the strong hand would be hers, and that 
she retained full authority over her subjects ; so that 
they had no doubt whatever that his Highness might 
safely pass over to England, provided that he guarded 
himself against the French naval force which was 
being prepared to intercept him." ^ 

A more private matter still had to be settled by 
Renard with the Queen. Which of her ministers 
and household should be pensioned and bribed by 
the Emperor, and to what extent, "as in order to 
gain them for his Highness [Philip] his Majesty had 
ordered us to be liberal to those she thought best " ? 
and this question was gravely submitted to the Council 
for consideration. Charles, as usual, was dreadfully 
driven for money, but an extra turn of the screw 
could always be applied to long-suffering Castile ; and 
when it was a question of gaining England, money 
had to be procured in plenty at any cost. As may 
be supposed, the list sent by the Council to Renard 
for presents to themselves and others did not err on 
the side of modesty ; and four thousand crowns' worth 

* Renard to the Emperor, 8th March. Record Office, Brussels 
Transcripts, vol. i. 



THE BETROTHAL 51 

of gold shoulder-chains and as much ready money was 
promptly handed over to the itching palms of the 
English courtiers; whereupon "the Councillors gave 
us such a good response, that if the result corre- 
sponds with their words, we have no doubt that 
safety will attend the coming of his Highness to 
this country." ^ 

The further to secure Philip from the attacks of the "i 
French, a fleet of twenty English ships was commis- 
sioned for his escort in the Channel ; and when all 
this was arranged, a deputation of the Council on theT 
7th March came to lead Renard and Egmont to 
a chamber in Whitehall, where the Queen and her 
household awaited them. Upon an altar in the room 
the Blessed Host was exposed, and before it Mary 
and Egmont respectively swore that the conditions of 
the marriage treaty should be held binding. Mary 
was fervid and excited. Before taking the oath she 
spontaneously "fell upon her knees and cried to God 
to witness that the marriage she had agreed to had 
not been prompted by any carnal affection, by cupidity, 
or any other reason than the honour, welfare, and 
profit of her realm, the repose and tranquillity of her 
subjects ; and that she had no other intention than 
to keep true to the marriage and oath that she had 
already made to her Crown ; saying all this with such 
grace that the spectators were moved to tears." 2 
The ceremony ended with more devout prayer by the 
Queen on her knees ; and then Egmont, handing to 
her the magnificent ring that had been sent by Philip 



* Renard to the Emperor, 8th March. Record Ofl&ce, Brussels 
Transcripts, vol. i. 
Ibid. 



52 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

as a token of his troth, bade her farewell and hurried 
,jpff to Spain. I 

In the meanwhile Philip himself was busy with his 
great preparations. All Spain was impressed with 
the grandeur of the occasion. The marriage meant 
for Philip's faithful lieges the final conquest over 
France and the bringing back into the Catholic fold 
of the rich realm of England ; it meant, they believed, 
a cessation of the ruinous wars which had beggared 
the realms of Castile and reduced whole provinces to 
misery. But, though the Spaniards rejoiced at the 
great stroke of policy that in their view was to 
fasten another crown upon the brows of their beloved 
Prince, they were doubly enthusiastic at the noble 
self-sacrifice that he was making for their sake, and 
filled with regret at his leaving them. Endless 
preparations had to be made for the tremendous 
transport that would be necessary for the crowds of 
nobles, courtiers and servants who were to accom- 
pany the Prince to England. The absence was 
looked upon as being for an indefinite time, and 
only such persons as were able-bodied and fairly 

^ As showing the excited condition of the public mind even 
yet with regard to the marriage, it may be mentioned that the day 
before this scene was passing, on the 6th March, two bands of 
about 300 London urchins collected in a field — probably Moor- 
fields — and engaged in strenuous combat against each other ; 
one band representing the Queen's and Philip's forces, and the 
other those of the King of France and Wyatt's. Noailles, in 
his account of the affair — though Renard does not mention the 
detail — says that the unfortunate boy who was made to represent 
the Prince of Spain was captured and hanged, very nearly 
fatally. The leaders of the fight on both sides were well 
whipped and imprisoned by the Queen's orders. — Ambassades 
de Noailles, iii. 130. Renard's Letter, 9th March. Record 
Office, Brussels Transcripts, and Queen Jane and Queen Mary. 



PREPARATIONS IN SPAIN 53 

unencumbered were allowed to go. Indeed, a great 
assembly of members of the household was held in 
order that the Duke of Alba might announce that 
any of those who had good reason for not accom- 
panying his Highness were free to stay behind. 
Those who elected to go — the great majority — were 
granted considerable sums of money for their outfit ; 
and the nobles, too, were given leave to go to their 
own towns to prepare the gorgeous dresses and 
appointments they and their households were expected 
to take with them, It_ is curious to note that many ' 
of the servitors who were to undertake the journey 
sold all their property in Spain, in the belief that they 
were at once to settle and take possession of the land 
of England. We are told that the wife of one officer, 
expecting to obtain the approval of Philip, asked for 
his leave to sell all they had in order to follow him 
unencumbered. Philip's answer was significant and 
characteristic. " I do not order you either to sell or 
not to sell your property, for know ye that I am not 
going to a marriage feast, but to a fight." ^ This was 
the spirit in which all regarded the sacrifice he was 
making. He was going on a holy crusade, amidst 
many heretics, whom he was to win for the Church ; 
the French were lying in wait to thwart or capture 
him ; and all Spaniards felt that the Prince went 
to conquer and not to woo, though none doubted, 
nor did he, that victory would finally be his. Old 
servitors unable to make the journey were pensioned ; 
the girl children of those who went were, at Philip's 
expense, boarded and educated in their parents' 
absence, the boys being similarly provided for at 
Alcald de Henares. 

'^ Mufioz's narrative, Sociedad de Bibliofilos. 



54 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Whilst all Spain was thus busy providing the 
splendid stuffs and adornments by which the savage 
Englishmen were to be dazzled, news came to Philip 
at Valladolid that the English special ambassadors, 
the Earl of Bedford and Lord Fitzwalter, who were 
coming with greetings from his betrothed, might be 
expected any day at Laredo, on the Biscay coast, 
and his Steward, Gutierre Lopez de Padilla, hurried 
off to do them honour at the end of February, whilst 
Valladolid was hastily decked from end to end with 
bravery and lists erected for sports, bullfights, tourneys, 
and the like. But the news was premature, for it was 
the 13th March before Bedford and his colleagues 
left London on their embassy ; and before they 
arrived in Spain the rejoicings prepared for their 
reception were turned into mourning by the news 
of the death of Philip's brother-in-law and cousin, 
the Prince of Portugal. 
-f As soon as the tidings of Mary's ratification of the 
treaty reached Philip, he, like the gallant suitor he 
intended to appear, despatched the Marquis de las 
Navas to England with a present to his bride truly 
magnificent in its richness. " A table diamond set as 
a rose, beautifully wrought and worth 50,000 ducats ; 
a necklace of brilliant diamonds consisting^ of eisfhteen 
stones worth 30,000 ducats. A great diamond with a 
large pendant pearl, one of the most beautiful pieces 
ever seen in the world, worth 25,000 ducats ; besides 
many jewels, necklaces, pearls, diamonds, emeralds, 
and rubies of inestimable value." This list is given by 
one of Philip's lackeys, attached to the service of Don 
Carlos. The sartorial splendour of velvets, silks, 
satins, and bullion, which the same authority sets forth 
for our admiration, as being in preparation for Philip 



PREPARATIONS IN SPAIN 55 

and his Court, and the extravagant richness of the 
appointments, dresses, armour, saddlery, plate, and 
furniture, for the Prince's service sent forward to 
Corunna, where he was to embark, reads like a fairy- 
tale. Every noble's dress and livery is described 
with the minuteness of a tailor's bill, and the appear- 
ance of these proud hidalgos must have been sump- 
tuous in the extreme.^ Philip himself always pre-"T 
ferred serious gravity in his dress ; but he had been 
told that the English loved splendour, and he was 
determined on this occasion ' that they should have _ 
it to their hearts' content. Some of his beautiful 
garments we shall have an opportunity of describing 
later, but here is one suit which must have been 
exceedingly gorgeous. A crimson velvet cape, 7 
covered with little chains made of silk twist, enclosing 
lozenges, and a sort of sprig with large leaves running 
between them, made of silver lace and filled in with 
silver fringe. The lining of this cape was smooth cloth 
of silver embroidered with the same sort of work ; the 

trunks, doublet, and tunic were of smooth crimson 

velvet embroidered in the same way. 

All these elaborate preparations being completed, 
Philip, with the Dukes of Alba and Medini Celi, 
Egmont, Feria, Pescara, Ruy Gomez, and a score of 
the highest grandees of Spain and nearly a thousand 
horsemen glittering and flashing in the Castilian sun, 
rode out of Valladolid on the 14th May, 1554. The 
Prince's Spanish and Teuton guards and his three 
hundred servants were all dressed in the gaudy red- 
and-yellow livery of Aragon, and each of the nobles 
was followed by a retinue which vied with that of the 
Prince in brilliance. The cavalcade had to make a 
^ Muiioz's narrative. 



56 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

long detour down to the Portuguese frontier to receive 
the grief-stricken young widow, Philip's sister, who 
was to govern Spain in his absence, and again to 
Tordesillas for the Prince to take a last farewell of his 
mad grandmother, Jane the Crazy. At each town, too, 
especially at Benavente and Astorga, there were bull- 
fights and tourneys, banquets and religious cere- 
monials, so that it was the 22nd June, the day 
before the Vigil of St. John, when the kneeling 
aldermen of Santiago de Compostela tendered to 
Philip the golden keys at the gates of their sainted city. 
As the Prince and his suite rode through the 
decorated streets to worship at the shrine of the 
Spanish patron Saint James, and thank him for his 
protection so far, a party of gentlemen at the upper 
window of a house looked on with faces shrouded in 
their cloaks. These were the English ambassadors — 
the Earl of Bedford, Lord Fitzwalter, and others — sent 
by Mary to pledge her troth to her new husband ; and 
on the following morning they were brought by a 
crowd of Spanish hildalgos into the presence of the 
future King Consort of England. Philip received 
^hem smilingly, cap in hand, for even thus early he had 
taken to heart the injunctions of his father and of 
Renard that he would conciliate the English by 
changing his habitual grave aloofness for the gay 
_ amiability which he afterwards assumed in England. 
Bedford, Fitzwalter, Sidney, and the rest of them, 
bowed low and half bent the knee before him one by 
one ; ^ and when the presentations were over, Bedford 

^ On this and on all occasions that English fashions of the 
time are described by Spaniards, mention was made of the 
enormous number of ornamental buttons that English gentlemen 
wore on their garments. 



THE ENGLISH EMBASSY 57 

took from a secretary a copy of the capitulations and 
handed them to the Prince, who confirmed them by 
word of mouth without opening the paper. Bedford 
appears to have impressed the Spaniards favourably 
as "a. great gentleman and a good Christian," and 
both he and his colleagues did their errand in courtly 
fashion. When Philip had confirmed the capitulations, 
we are told, "they showed the greatest delight, from 
the highest to the lowest, kissing his Highness's hands 
with great demonstration ; and as they went out they 
said to each other in their own tongue, * Blessed be to 
God who has given us as good a king as this ! ' This 
was said so quietly amongst themselves that it would 
not have been noticed, but that a Spanish gentleman 
who understood their tongue heard and repeated it."^ 
The next day the Englishmen attended pontifical Mass 
at the Cathedral with Philip, greatly, we are told, to 
their edification and devotion, '* which God grant 
may continue, for they need it badly enough." Before 
starting on his thirty-miles' ride from Santiago to 
Corunna, Philip distributed costly presents to the 
English embassy, Bedford's gift being " one of the 
finest pieces of gold plate ever seen, more than three 
feet in height, exquisitely and elaborately chased with 
classical and grotesque figures, the intrinsic value 
of the gold contained being six thousand ducats." t^ 
A brave show of ships awaited the arrival of Philip I 
in Corunna, for many soldiers were to pass over with 
the Prince to defend him from the French on the way 
and reinforce the Emperor's army in Flanders ; and as 
the glittering cavalcade came in sight of the harbour, 
he was met "by six hundred seaman — lancers from 
the province of Guipuzcoa, smart men and prettily 
^ Munoz's narrative. 



58 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

accoutred, who performed many evolutions, waving 
their lances joyously, with much playing of drums and 
fifes. Then the fleet and the fortress shot such a 
salute that in very truth it seemed as if town and 
fortress together were coming down, the people being 
in great fear and wonder to see the houses tremble 
thus as if by earthquake. All said that the human 
race had never witnessed such a discharge as this. The 
smoke was so great during the hour and a half that 
the firing lasted that neither earth nor heaven could 
be seen. After this there entered the harbour nine 
ships of the fleet, well supplied with everything and 
very smart, with a vast number of painted standards 
and 3,500 soldiers on board. These ships then took 
up the salute with their big guns, after which the 
/^infantry shot with their muskets for half an hour.''^ 
/ On Philip's return to his lodging, forty fishing 

/ sloops cast at his feet their fresh-caught harvest 

'^-. of the sea, and the next day he inspected the ship, 

' The Holy Ghost, of Martin de Bertondona, in which 
it had just been arranged that he was to make 
the voyage to England. From end to end the ship 
was alive with scarlet silk streamers, and many-hued 
heraldic pennons waved aloft : the bulwarks and 
castles were hung with crimson damask, and the 
cabin destined for the Prince was a marvel of chased 
and chiselled gold and exotic woods, The great 
standard of crimson damask, painted with the Imperial 
arms and golden flames, was thirty yards long, and 
dozens of other standards rivalling it in size fluttered 
from every mast and spar. Three hundred sailors, 
garbed in scarlet liveries, manned this gallant craft. 

^ Mufioz's narrative. 



EMBARKATION OF PHILIP 59 

But all this splendour seems to have aroused some 
jealousy amongst the English, and when Philip went 
on board the ship that had brought the ambassadors 
to Spain to be bounteously entertained at dinner, 
Bedford urged him to trust himself to an English ship 
and Engflish sailors. The Prince hesitated a while, 
but his councillors, and particularly the Duke of Alba, 
would not hear of it, for none knew as yet how far 
they might trust to the islanders so recently heretic. 
To please the English sailors, however, Philip allowed 
them to choose for him the Spanish ship they con- 
sidered the safest ; and at their recommendation he 
sailed in Bertondona's vessel, instead of, as intended, 
in the galleon of the great sailor Alvaro de Bazan. 

To muster and ship six thousand soldiers as well 
as the great train of courtiers and servants that 
followed Philip took many days, whilst the Prince 
was being feasted and entertained by neighbouring 
nobles. During this time there entered Corunna the 
Spanish ship that had carried the Marquis of Las 
Navas to England with the presents for Mary, and 
marvellous stories had the mariners to tell of the 
eager preparations being made by the Queen and 
her people to receive the new King. How she was 
at Winchester with a thousand gentlemen, and how, 
amongst other fine things to welcome her bridegroom, 
she had collected two thousand fine horses for the 
Spaniards, believing that they would bring none 
by sea with them.^ At length the fleet of nearly 
a hundred sail was ready. The gilding upon the 
towering stern and forecastles, with lines of shining 
lanterns, flashed back the summer sun, and the 

^ In fact they shipped a large number of horses. 



6o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

crowds of gaily clad soldiers and sailors played 
strange pranks in the rigging and amongst the gaudy 
flags to amuse grave Philip, whilst for two days the 
ships lay idle in Corunna harbour awaiting the fair 
wind that was to carry the Prince of Spain upon his 
mission of conquest. 
7" On Friday, 13th July, a soft breeze from the south 
enabled the fleet to sail, whilst a dense crowd upon 
the shore sent up fervent prayers for the safety of the 
Prince, who in a pure spirit of martyrdom was_-ihus 
going to " our new realm of England for the 
exaltation of our holy faith and the good of Christen- 
dom." Others there were on the shore who shouted 
insults, taunts, and challenges to all the Frenchmen 
alive ; for with England at the bidding of the 
Emperor, the poorest beggar in Spain knew that 
France was powerless against him. The slight swell 
that at first somewhat upset unaccustomed stomachs, 
was succeeded on the morning of Saturday by a dead 
calm and a motionless sea, which, whilst it comforted 
the landsmen, made the seamen look blank ; for, 
as they said, it might delay the fleet for a month. 
But the next day, Sunday, a delightful fair wind 
sprang up, and the long trail of vessels stretched 
across the tranquil Bay until Ushant, the land of 
the enemy, loomed up to starboard on Monday after- 
noon. On Wednesday morning in the Channel a 
fleet of galleons was sighted, which it was feared 
might be Frenchmen, but which turned out to be the 
Flemish escort sent by the Emperor, with several 
ships of the English navy. Thus accompanied, the 
Spaniards sailed up to Southampton Water on Thurs- 
day, 19th July, and at four o'clock in the afternoon 
anchored amidst the royal salute from the thirty 



DISSENSIONS IN ENGLAND 6i 

English and Flemish ships assembled to receive the 
Queen's new Consort. -^ 

Things had not been going very smoothly in 
England in the meanwhile. Mary's Council was 
profoundly disunited, Paget and the Chancellor, 
Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, being at bitter feud 
with each other ; and Mary herself was angry and 
distrustful with Gardiner and his adherents, who, she 
feared, quite without reason, were secretly favouring 
Elizabeth and the Wyatt prisoners. On one occa- 
sion, late in March, a number of members of the 
Council, even Paget being amongst them out of 
enmity to Gardiner, took the bold course of enter- 
ing the Queen's oratory after vespers, and told her 
that it was now time for clemency, and that if any 
more noble blood was shed it would no longer be 
justice but cruelty. The bloody-minded advice, 
they said, of others should not be followed — meaning 
by this Gardiner, who was absent, and Renard, who 
was never tired of urging severity upon Mary. The 
Queen, taken by surprise, at once pardoned six of the 
gentlemen of Kent implicated in Wyatt's rising who 
had been condemned to death. Poor Mary was 
beset on every side by warring counsels, with 
Renard telling her that for her own and her hus- 
band's safety she must strike hard, and her Council 
in revolt at what they considered the cruelty incul- 
cated by Gardiner, and at one time she consented 
to Renard's plan for a coup d'etat which should 
practically make her supreme. The Lord Admiral 
(Howard), Pembroke, Derby, Shrewsbury, and Sussex 
were to be employed in distant parts of the realm ; a 
reconciliation was to be effected between Gardiner 
^ Mufioz's narrative. Sociedad de Bibliofilos. 



62 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

and Paget, and the whole business of State was to 
be managed by them, with the assistance of Petre, 
the Earl of Arundel, and two others. Renard 
thought that this solution was the only one which 
offered any security for Philip's safety, and when 
the Queen was induced by some of her Councillors 
to pardon on Good Friday the Marquis of North- 
ampton and eight more prisoners implicated in the 
Wyatt rising, the Imperial ambassador roundly 
scolded her for her ill-timed clemency. It was not 
by any means certain, he said, that Philip would 
consent to come to England at all. The dissen- 
sions of her Councillors were very dangerous, and 
it behoved her to consider very carefully, since the 
security must be furnished by her, and the Prince 
could not come armed, what a scandal and calamity 
it would be if anything happened to him.^ Mary 
wept at this, and said that "she would rather never 
have been born than that any outrage should be 
committed on his Highness, but she trusted to God 
that no such thing would occur. All her Councillors 
would do their duty in receiving the Prince, and are in 
great hopes of him. She would reform her Council 
and reduce it to six members ; she would do her best 
to incline her subjects to his Highness's favour ; and 
she would take good care that the cases of Courtenay 
^nd Elizabeth were finished before the Prince arrived.^ 
— Noailles and the French sympathisers, too, were 
still at work stirring up alarm at the coming of the 
Spaniards. Here was a bridegroom, they sneered, 
who was coming to win a wife, with a great army 
intended to land on English soil and proclaim him- 

^ Record Office, Brussels Transcripts. 

" Renard to the Emperor. Record Office, Brussels Transcripts. 




WILLIAM LORD PAGET 

FROM A PAINTING IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 



DISSENSIONS IN ENGLAND 63 

self King in his own right, with all his swarm of 
priests, friars, and inquisitors to oppress the English 
people. Even the English sailors on Howard's ships 
were so distrustful of the Spaniards that when the 
Flemish crews of the Emperor's fleet set foot on 
shore during the time they awaited Philip's arrival 
the visitors were hustled and insulted everywhere, 
whilst the Lord Admiral himself had openly mocked 
at their ships as mussel-shells. ^ Whether it be true, 
as was asserted, that Howard committed the grave 
discourtesy of throwing a shot across the bows of the 
Prince's fleet to compel a salute to the English flag is 
doubtful, but it is certain that the feeling in the country 
amongst high and low as the time went on was as 
strongly against the Spanish bridegroom as ever. _^ 
During the months that passed between the formal ' 
betrothal in March and the coming of Philip, Mary 
grew more and more impatient, railing at her quarrel- 
ling Councillors, worried almost daily by Renard to 
hasten the execution of Elizabeth and Courtenay, 
and a prey to frequent hysterical attacks of wounded 
pride at what she considered the ungallant lack of 
eagerness on the part of her new husband to join 
her. She grew more faded and older with her 
anxiety, and this increased her distress,^ for Eliza- 
beth was young and beautiful, and the Queen knew 
that the love of the people for her was growing 
with the dread of Spanish Catholic intolerance. And 
yet the majority of the Council, not to mention the 
Parliament that was sitting, would never sanction 
the sacrifice of the Princess at the instance of the 

' Renard to the Emperor, 9th June. Record Office, Brussels 
Transcripts. 
" Noailles to the King, 17th June, 1554. Ambassades. 



64 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Imperial ambassador ; and even the Lord Admiral 
and his fleet were suspected of a design to declare 
against the Queen unless his cousin, Princess Eliza- 
beth, was well treated. Renard's letters of the time 
reflect the distracted condition of affairs from day to 
day, no man knowing in which direction future safety 
or ruin to him might be encountered. " The Queen 
is reduced to such a state of perplexity that she is at 
a loss whose advice to adopt, knowing well that all is 
being done in favour of Lady Elizabeth." Scurrilous 
ballads were flung about in public places, even in 
the Queen's palace, bitterly lampooning the unhappy 
Mary and her lagging Spanish bridegroom. To 
make matters worse, when the French ambassador, 
Noailles, who was known to be the principal fomenter 
of all this trouble, went to take leave of Mary at 
Whitehall the day before she set out on her gradual 
approach to the coast to meet Philip at the end of 
May, an open wrangle took place between them, and 
the ambassador in a rage threatened to leave England 
immediately — a threat not at all distasteful to the 
Imperialists, because it brought nearer what they 
aimed at before all things — the breaking out of 
hostilities between England and France. 

"i" By slow stages Mary travelled through the latter 
half of June and early July from Richmond by Oat- 
lands and Farnham to Winchester, where she arrived 

^jtwQ days after Philip had landed at Southampton. 

J As Philip had truly said, this was no romantic love 
voyage that he was making, but a deliberate sacrifice 
of all his personal tastes and wishes for the sake of 
overwhelming political expediency. No effort was 
to be spared to gain England to the side of Spain 
against France, and Philip deliberately laid himself 



TO CONCILIATE THE ENGLISH 65 

out to please. On his famous voyage to stay with 
his father in Flanders some years before, his cold 
hauteur and lack of expansiveness had quite alienated 
the Germans and Flemings from him. His grave 
young face, his prim demeanour, his sober gar- 
ments, his rigid abstemiousness in eating and drink- 
ing, and his distaste for the martial amusements of 
the time, were all foreign to the rough vitality of 
the Teutons ; and Renard and the Emperor had 
warned the Prince that he must not repeat his mis- 
take, but conform to English customs and learn at 
least some English words. The Spaniards of his 
train were enjoined also "to behave themselves 
according to English fashion, and to be modest In 
their bearing, trusting that your Highness, with your,,, 
accustomed kindness, will make much of them." "^ And 
the Emperor, desirous of avoiding all occasion for 
dissension, writes to his son (ist April, 1554) : "They 
tell me that some married women are going with 
their husbands in your company. I think they will 
be more difficult to govern and keep friends with 
the English women than even soldiers would be. 
You had better see whether It would not be wiser 
to send them here [to Flanders] until affairs in 
England are more settled." - 

Even Philip's enemies, the Venetians, testified to ' 
the change of his demeanour during his stay in_^ 
England ; and Soriano, the outgoing ambassador, 
said that from that time forward, even in Spain, 
his gentle courtesy and kindness were continued 
habitually, whilst Michaeli, the new Venetian ambas- 

^ Renard to the Prince, 13th March, Record Office, Brussels 
Transcripts. 

2 Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, vol. iv. 

F 



66 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

sador, who was the staunch ally of Noailles, was 

emphatic in his testimony of Philip's affability in 

_^ England, and says that his conduct towards his 

« wife was such as to make any woman love him : 
" for in truth no one in the world could have been 
a better or more affectionate husband." Yet another 
Venetian envoy, Damula, accredited to the Emperor, 

/ wrote that on disembarking in England the Prince 
was " remarked by everybody for his graciousness, 
without any stiffness or assumption of royal cere- 
mony, mixing with the courtiers rather as a comrade 
than as a king," Certain it is, with public opinion in 
England strongly unfavourable and in a perfect panic 
of apprehension, Philip's tact and graciousness to a 
great extent overcame the prejudice against him, and 
he became in a few months personally quite popular, 
whilst he contrived almost immediately to gain his 
wife's devoted affection. The over-coloured picture 
of Philip as a trembling, seasick creature,^ in daily 
fear of poison, which Froude drew from the letters of 
Noailles and the account of the Venetian, Baoardo, 
needs much modification to be near the impartial 
_ truth ; for though, as we have seen, Philip looked 

' upon the marriage as a sacrifice to reasons of 
State, as undoubtedly it was, he bore his cross 

_ gaily and like a well-bred gentleman. If he had 



* The only warrant for the seasick story is that contained in a 
letter from Bedford and Fitzwalter in Spain to the Council, 
saying that the Prince "was wont to be very sick upon the sea," 
and proposing that some preparations should be made at 
Plymouth for his landing there in case of need. But, in fact, 
Philip had a smooth voyage, and remained at anchor on the 
Espiritu Santo in Southampton harbour for nearly twenty-four 
hours before he landed, and was in perfect health. 



THE LANDING OF PHILIP 67 

done otherwise, indeed, as he was quite clever 
enough to recognise, the sacrifice itself would have 
been useless. 

From the hour of his arrival in Southampton 
Water, two o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday, 
19th July, until after breakfast the next day, Philip 
remained on board the Espiritu Santo at anchor, 
whilst the salutes of the ships and forts thundered 
out their welcome ; state barges brought the English 
and Flemish Lord Admirals to visit the Prince, and 
the Marquis of las Navas, Figueroa, the Emperor's 
special ambassador, and several high English nobles, 
came to pay their respects to the new king. After 
breakfast on the 20th July, Howard's state galley 
came alongside the Espiritu Santo, and from it 
climbed to the deck the Lord Admiral and a little 
group of English nobles — Arundel, Derby, and 
Shrewsbury — with Sir John Williams, to whom 
Philip at once handed the white wand of Chamber- 
lain. The Prince stood upon the high deck, cap in 
hand and with smiling face, to receive them, and after 
they had been presented to the principal grandees 
the English nobles led the Prince to the barge, 
followed by the Duke of Alba, with his lean, dark 
face and long, grizzled beard ; Count de Feria, with 
his raven hair and flashing eyes ; Ruy Gomez, 
Philip's dearest friend, suave and imperturbable ; 
Pescara, Egmont, Horn, and a dozen other high 
courtiers, Spaniards and Flemings. No permission 
was given to the other courtiers to land until the 
Prince's barge touched the shore, whilst no soldier ' 
or man-at-arms was allowed to land at all on pain of 
death, for Philip dared not offend English feeling in 
this matter, and he had learnt from his father that the 



68 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

fortune of war had been against him, and he needed 
every man-at-arms at once in Flanders. ^ 

As the gaily dressed oarsmen rapidly forced the 
great gilded galley through the smooth water to the 
shore, a little ceremony was performed under the stern 
canopy. The Earl of Arundel and Sir John Williams 
as a commission from the Queen besought permission 
to invest the Prince with the Order of the Garter ; 
and Williams fastened the gilt ligature around his 
leg, whilst Arundel placed upon his breast a glitter- 
ing pendant rose and George. As Philip stepped 
upon English soil for the first time, thirty nobles 
and gentlemen of the Queen's Court did him 
reverence, and Sir Anthony Browne, leading a 
beautiful white hackney caparisoned in crimson 
velvet and gold, announced himself in a Latin 
speech as the new Consort's master of the horse. 
The Prince thanked the new grand equerry, but 
replied that, as the distance was short, he would 
walk on foot to the house prepared for him. But 
this he was told was not in accordance with English 
etiquette, and without more ado Browne, lifting him 
up in his arms, placed him in the saddle, and then, 
humbly kissing the golden stirrups, walked bare- 
headed by his master's side. With crowds of gaily 
clad English and Spanish courtiers preceding him, 
Philip passed thus through the curious townsfolk to 
the Church of Holy Rood. He must have looked 
an impressive figure, with his dapper, erect bearing, 
his yellow, curly beard and close-cropped fair head, 

^ The bulk of the Spanish fleet was not allowed even to enter 
the harbour of Southampton for provisions and water, which 
only after much unpleasantness and discourtesy they were able 
to obtain at Portsmouth. 



PHILIP AT SOUTHAMPTON 69 

dressed, as he was, in black velvet and silver, hung 
all about with massive gold chains and with glittering 
precious stones in his velvet cap, upon breast, neck,^ 
and wrists. Browne himself was no unworthy com- 
pany for his Prince, for he too was garbed in a rich 
suit of black velvet entirely covered with fine gold 
embroidery, with a surcoat of the same, of which the 
long, hanging false sleeves were lined with cloth of 
silver. ^ 

After a brief service of thanksgiving, Philip was ' 
taken to the house destined for his reception. The 
English guards and archers on duty and a crowd of 
English household servitors had been dressed by 
Mary's directions in the red-and-yellow livery of 
Spain ; and when Philip entered the rooms prepared 
for him, he found that here, too, his wife's thoughtful 
prevision had been exercised ; for the appointments 
and furniture were sumptuous, and upon the walls 
there hung royal draperies of gold -embroidered 
damask. I To the assembled English nobles Philip 
then delivered a dignified speech in Latin, saying 
that he had left his own land not to augment his 
possessions or his power, of which he had sufficient, 
but because God had called him to marry their 
Queen, with whom he intended to live here in 
harmony ; and he promised his hearers that if they 
were faithful to her and to him, "he would be to 
them a right good and loving prince." He was 
from the first all smiles and graciousness to the 
English, who were, indeed, agreeably surprised at 

^ Whilst they all praise the sumptuous fittings of the rooms, 
not a single Spanish narrator says a word of the story told by 
the malicious Venetian, that Philip was shocked by the words 
" Fidei Defensor " being embroidered on the hangings. 



70 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

his amiability when after his private supper he 
came out into the presence chamber and chatted 
_unajEfectedly and gaily with the gentlemen there. 
To bluff Lord Admiral Howard he said that he 
had come to England for his wedding unprovided 
with garb sufficiently sumptuous to do honour to 
their Queen, but he hoped that the velvet horse- 
cloth of the hackney the Queen had sent him might 
serve him to make a splendid vestment withal. 
7" The pledging of the company after supper in a 
draught of English beer, which the partial view of 
Froude presented as a repellant and unwilling con- 
cession, was a perfectly natural part of the whole 
of Philips behaviour. He had come to win the 
English by affability, and he was determined as 
much as possible to conform to English prejudices 
and to impress upon his Spanish followers the need 
for their doing likewise. Even the enemy, who 
records the action, does not hint at any demon- 
stration of dislike or reluctance on the part of Philip 
to the politic course he took. So thoroughly, indeed, 
did he act up to his policy, that before he left South- 
ampton his Spanish attendants were all scowling and 
grumbling in spite and jealousy that their Prince was 
preferring Englishmen to them, and that his service 
and safety were placed in the hands of foreigners to 
the exclusion of his own people. Though Philip had 
great ends to serve in drinking beer and sitting out 
gargantuan English feasts, at which his proud frugal 
countrymen scoffed, to the courtiers who accompanied 
him from Spain, it was as gall and wormwood to see 
the greatest Prince in Christendom thus curry favour 
with these rough islanders, whom they regarded as 
inferiors ; and when, on Saturday, the Spaniards 



PHILIP AT SOUTHAMPTON 71 

were all ordered to leave the church at Southampton 
before the service was over, in order that the Prince 
might come out attended only by Englishmen, they 
broke out into almost open protest, particularly when, 
as the rain was coming down in torrents and the 
Prince was without cape or hat, he borrowed the 
garments from an Englishman near him rather than 
from a Spaniard, to go the few yards from the churchy 
to his lodging. 

The three hundred houses of which Southampton ' 
consisted were already crammed to overflowing with 
Philip's great train of courtiers and four hundred 
servants, but every hour the crowd in the little port 
grew as the neighbouring gentry, with their followers, 
rode in to honour their new King in accordance with_ 
Queen Mary's orders. Nor was this all, for early on 
Saturday morning the Earl of Pembroke came with an 
escort for the Prince of two hundred English gentle- 
men in black velvet and gold chains, and three 
hundred more in scarlet, all splendidly mounted. In 
return for this, Philip sent Egmont to the Queen with ■ 
thanks and loving messages. Half way to Winchester 
Egmont met a great train coming towards him, escort- 
ing the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, bearing 
from his Sovereign a valuable ring to her spouse. 
Gardiner had done his best to prevent the match, and 
when that had proved impossible, he had cleverly 
minimised its disadvantages from an English point of 
view, so that he was far from being persona grata to 
Renard and the Spaniards. But for weeks past he 
had been in hourly danger of ruin from the cabals 
against him and the distrust of the Queen ; and he 
now sought safety in an apparent cordiality towards 
the Spanish marriage, an attitude which Philip repaid 



72 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

by treating him with almost excessive deference. 
The next day (Sunday), in the torrential rain, the 
favourite Ruy Gomez rode to Winchester with 
another beautiful ring for Mary, and the Lords of 
the Council and a host of other nobles came in to 
salute Philip, who, after rising late, dined and supped 
in public for the first time in England. To the rage 
of the Spaniards, his English household served him ; 
though the proudest of his grandees, the Duke of 
Alba, was allowed unofficially to hand him the 
napkin. I " We are of no more use here, and are 
simply vagabonds. We should be better employed 
in serving in the war, for they make us pay here 
twenty times what a thing is worth," grumbled one 
of Philip's gentlemen-in-waiting, who fairly repre- 
sented the general feeling amongst them, even on 
the first days of their arrival in England. 

Before Philip started on Monday afternoon for 
Winchester, better news came from the Emperor. 
The French had not followed up their victory at 
Marienburg, and the six hundred Spanish jennets 
which had come in the fleet, with Philip's own 
^_ horses, might now be landed.^ The anxious Queen, 
' nevertheless, continued to send fresh supplies of 
splendidly caparisoned horses for Philip's use ; and 
when, in a perfect deluge of rain, at two o'clock in 
the afternoon the Prince started out to join his bride 
in the ancient city seven miles away, a train of three 
thousand magnificently accoutred horsemen clattered 
in his train. With the exception of some fifteen of 

^ Enriquez's narrative. Sociedad de Bibliofilos. 

2 Philip's courtiers sneered that Browne took the King's 
horses to his own stables to recover from the voyage, in order 
that he might have a chance of keeping them altogether. 



PHILIP RIDES TO WINCHESTER 7z 

the highest Spanish nobles, who rode close around 
the Prince — Alba, Medina-Celi, Feria, and their like 
— Philip's strong bodyguard was formed of English 
men-at-arms dressed in Spanish colours, much to the 
jealousy of the Spanish guard still cooped up in the 
pestilential ships. On the road six hundred more 
English gentlemen in black velvet and gold met the 
cavalcade and joined it. Then, nearer Winchester, 
six of the Queen's pages, dressed in crimson brocade 
and cloth of gold, were encountered with a herald 
bringing for the Prince six more beautiful steeds as a 
present from their mistress. The malicious Venetian 
tells a story embellished by Froude of a breathless, 
galloping messenger from the Queen, whose haste 
threw Philip and his Spanish friends into a panic 
of fear ; but everything that Baoardo wrote on the 
subject of the marriage is suspect and cannot be 
accepted without confirmation, of which in this case 
there is none. 

When the Prince started from Southampton, he 
wore a surcoat of black velvet adorned with diamonds, 
and doublet and trunks of white satin embroidered 
with gold. But this delicate finery, though covered 
by a thick red felt cloak, was wet through before he 
arrived at Winchester ; and a halt was made at the 
beautiful hospital of Saint Cross to enable a change 
of garments to be donned, the fresh suit consisting 
of a black velvet surcoat trimmed with gold bugles, 
and under-garments of white velvet and gold. Thus 
bedizened he entered the ancient gateway, past kneel- 
ing mayor and aldermen, and through silent, gaping 
crowds of townsfolk, direct to the splendid cathedral, 
the shrine of England's ancient Kings. A little group 
of mitred bishops stood before the great west door, 



74 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

crosses raised and censers swinging ; and in solemn 
procession to the high altar they led beneath a velvet 
canopy this slim, erect, little man with fair face and 
yellow hair, whom they and their like regarded as 
God's chosen instrument to undo the impious work 
of Henry and of Somerset. 



CHAPTER III 



1554-1555 



Philip's first meeting with Mary — The marriage — Discontent and dis- 
appointment of the Spaniards^Philip's kindness to his wife — Spanish 
descriptions of England — Philip in London — Arrival of Pole— Philip's 
religious policy in England— His attempts to marry Elizabeth to Savoy 
— The Emperor's war with France — Departure of Philip from England 

DUSK was falling upon the gloomy day when 
Philip, having duly performed his devotions 
and admired the splendid fane of Winchester, 
found himself at ease in the Dean's house, which had 
been prepared for his reception. The Queen's maiden ' 
scruples had been respected, for it was not in accord- 
ance with etiquette that they should both sleep under 
the same roof before they became man and wife ; so 
that whilst the Deanery sheltered the bridegroom, the 
bride was lodged in Bishop Gardiner's castle adjoin- 
ing. Philip supped, and when he was thinking of 
going to bed, it being ten o'clock at night, some 
English courtiers and the Mistress of the Robes 
came and said that the Queen wished him to visit 
her secretly in her closet, where she awaited him, 
but that he was to bring only a very few followers. 
Another beautiful dress had perforce to be assumed, 
consisting- of a French surcoat embroidered in silver 
and gold, with doublet and trunks of white kid 
covered with gold embroidery ; and then, accom- 



75 



76 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

panied by Alba, Medina-Celi, Feria, Aguilar, Egmont, 
Horn, and a half-dozen more grandees, the Prince 
was led by his English guides across the lane and 
still-existing little green to a garden gate, through 
which only the nobles chosen by Philip were allowed 
to enter. They found themselves in a delicious 
garden, and in the mysterious darkness threaded 
the leafy alleys, until they arrived at the great 
moated house, which they entered by a little back 
door, from which a private stair led direct to the 
Queen's private apartment. 

When the English guide threw open the door at 
the head of the stair, Philip for the first time looked 
upon the woman who was to be his second wife. 
Mary was slowly pacing the long passage or gallery 
lined with tapestry, which constituted the room. 
Two gentlemen bore torches before her, and with 
her were Gardiner and three or four other aged 
men and some ladies-in-waiting. Philip hung back 
a few seconds whilst Egmont entered the room. He, 
being known to the Queen, was greeted by her 
graciously ; and then, as she caught sight of the 
smart figure of her bridegroom, she walked rapidly 
towards him, and kissed her hand before she grasped 
his. Philip did the same, and, in the English fashion 
of the time, gallantly kissed his elderly bride upon 
her lips. Mary was, as usual, splendidly dressed, 
and her trim little figure must have looked stately 
enough in her black velvet gown, cut high at the 
neck, her petticoat of frosted silver, her coif of black 
velvet and gold, and wonderful girdle, collar, and 
pendants of flashing gems. Her complexion was of 
that peculiar transparency which usually accom- 
panies red hair ; her eyes, which were also of ruddy 



PHILIP MEETS MARY 11 

brown, were almost without eyebrows, as her father's 
had been ; and her somewhat austere face was wreathed 
now with smiles of welcome to the man for whose 
coming she had yearned. 

Leading him by the hand to a chair beside her 
own beneath the canopy, she replied in French to 
his Spanish compliments. Whilst they were thus 
seated in happy converse, the irrepressible Lord 
Admiral Howard broke in with some of his usual 
suggestive jokes, not in the best taste according to 
the ideas of to-day, but apparently accepted at that 
time as quite permissible. Then, one by one, the 
Spanish nobles were brought forward to kiss the 
Queen's hand ; and Philip, apparently finding the inter- 
view somewhat tedious, as his knowledge of French 
was not extensive, proposed that he should go into 
the adjoining apartment to greet the Queen's ladies. 
Mary insisted upon accompanying him. The ladies, in 
pairs, were led forward to courtesy before the Prince, 
who, cap in hand, "in order not to violate the custom 
of the country, kissed each of them on the lips as they 
passed him." The ceremony, probably, was not over- 
pleasant to Mar)^, for when, the kissing being at an 
end, Philip suggested that it was getting late and he 
had better retire, the Queen insisted upon leading 
him to the canopy again for another chat. 

Already the Spaniards began to nod and wink to 
each other to signify that the Queen had fallen in 
love with her husband thus soon at first sight, and 
it is quite probable that such was the case. Mary's 
heart had been starved for love all her life. There 
was none of her kin now with whom she could 
unbend, and, with her crushing responsibility, it must 
have been for her like a glimpse of heaven to 



yS TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

feel that this good-looking, wise, young man, fully 
her equal in rank, and her superior in power, was 
in future to be kinsman, husband, and upholder in 
one. At last the time came for parting, and in 
jesting mood grave Philip learnt of his bride how 
to say "Good-night" in English. But alas! before 
he could reach the ladies in the other room to say 
the newly learnt words to them, the outlandish 
sounds had slipped out of his mind, and with much 
laughter and smiles he had to go back and learn 
them again from the Queen. ^ I n_ conversation with 
Philip, the Queen's governess (Mrs. Clarencius?) 
expressed her joy at the coming union and thanks 
to God for letting her live to see the day, though 
she regretted that she had not reared a more beauti- 
ful bride for him ; ^ and according to another eye- 
witness's account the Queen herself modestly thanked 
Philip for accepting so old and ugly a wife. Generally 
speaking, however, Mary does not appear to have 
produced an unfavourable impression upon the 
Spaniards. They speak of her manner at this time 
as being gay and gracious, and her clear complexion 
was much admired. Certainly Philip played his part 
to perfection, whatever his private feelings may have 
been ; and if Mary had been a budding beauty of 
twenty instead of a faded old maid of nearly forty, 
he could not have been a more gallant bridegroom 
in appearance than he was : although to his bosom 
friend, Ruy Gomez, he confided a few days after 
the wedding that he was prepared with resignation 
to drain the chalice to the end which his marriage 

^ Munoz's and Enriquez's narratives. Sociedad de Bibliofilos. 
2 Narrative by Car, who was a servant to Pescara. Printed in 
Milan, 1554. See the author's " Year After the Armada." 



AN ELDERLY BRIDE 79 

presented to him, since, as his friend knew, he had 
not married for love, but to restore England to the 
Church ; and such an object made him lose sight of 
the Queen's lack of personal attractions. 

Philip slept late the morning after his arrival at 
Winchester, and as soon as he was out of bed the 
Queen's tailor brought him two superb sets of 
garments — one made of very rich white brocade 
profusely embroidered with gold bugles and seed 
pearls, with diamonds for buttons, and the other a 
similar suit in crimson. Philip went that day, 
Tuesday, to Mass at the Cathedral, dressed in a 
purple velvet surcoat with silver fringe and white 
satin doublet and trunks ; and then after his private "' Lji^, ^ ^ 
dinner, went in great state to visit the Queen 
publicly. This time she received him in the great 
hall of the Bishop's palace, surrounded by the whole 
of her Court and attended by fifty ladies — *' none of 
them pretty " — dressed in purple velvet. Mary 
received the Prince at the foot of her dais, amidst 
the fanfare of trumpets, and after kissing him affec- 
tionately led him to the seat at her side. She must 
have looked as magnificent as fine clothes could make 
her as she sat *'in sweet converse" with him under 
her canopy ; for we are told that her purple velvet 
robe and cloth-of-gold petticoat were all aglow with 
precious stones, and that coif, neck, breast, ajnd^jwrists^ 
were stiff with pearls and diamonds. ^T^here were 
special ambassadors, too, to receive and welcome : 
Figueroa, viceroy of Naples, from the Emperor, 
others from the King of the Romans and his son, 
from Venice, Florence, Poland, and Ferrara. But 
one was missing ; for Noailles, the Frenchman, for 
whom this marriage was a dire defeat, had not been 



8o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

bidden to the feast ; and in the intervals of his 
plotting to raise trouble was writing to his baffled 
master ill-natured and distorted reports, at second 

^and, of the proceedings. 

7" The next day, Wednesday, 25th July, was the Feast 
of St. James, the patron of Spain, and the noble 
cathedral of Winchester was aflame with glowing 
colour. The ancient nave can never have seen so 
gorgeous a company as was there assembled in the 
forenoon. All that pomp, skill, and lavish expendi- 
ture could produce was there to do honour to an 
event which all spectators felt was one of moving 
interest for the future of the world ; because it meant, 
so far as men might see, the secure fastening upon the 
neck of England again of the yoke of the Papacy, 
which Henry VIII. had shaken off, the stifling of the 
Reformation in Europe, and the reduction of France 
to a secondary place amongst the nations. Philip, in 
the white satin suit the Queen had sent him and with 
a regal mantle of cloth of gold, led his dazzlingly clad 
bride up the lofty nave to an elevated platform in the 
centre ; and there Gardiner, with three attendant 
Bishops, made them man and wife. To equalise their 
rank, it was announced that the Viceroy Figueroa had 
brought formal instruments from the Emperor, resign- 
ing to his son the Kingdoms of Naples and Jerusalem ; 
and this proclamation having been made, the King 
and Queen, with swords of state borne before them by 
the Earls of Derby and Pembroke, descended to the 
high altar, followed by fifty ladies in cloth of gold, 
to hear Mass, during which, we are told, the Queen 
never removed her devout eyes from the crucifix. 

Rarely can a marriage have taken place prompted 
on both sides by such elevation of spirit as this. The 




QUEEN MARY AT THE PERIOD OF HER MARRIAGE 

FROM THE PAINTING BY ANTONIO MOH IN THE PRADO MUSEUM 



THE MARRIAGE 8i 

objects In view may be condemned now, as they were 
condemned by many at the time, but there is no 
gainsaying that, so far as Philip and Mary were 
concerned, they both believed they were making 
private sacrifice for the public welfare. This feeling 
was evident through the whole of the marriage negotia- 
tions and afterwards, especially in Philips case, until it 
was seen that the plan had failed.^ It is true that the 
famished heart of Mary grew to love her husband for 
his own sake as time went on ; but she loved him 
first and best because he personified the force that 
was to make England Catholic, whilst she to him 
meant the influence that was to enable him and his 
House to wield the power of England against their 
enemy. , 

After the ceremony, the King and Queen walked in 
procession through an immense crowd to the Bishop's 
palace, where in the great hall was laid the wedding 
banquet. All the courtly ceremony of saluting the 
royal dishes as they were brought in, the genuflexions 
to the throne, the trumpeting of minstrels, and the 
symbolic functions of the great officers of State, 
aroused the admiration of the form-loving Spaniards ; 
but their hearts were raging with jealousy during the 
progress of the feast, for their wounded pride did 
not fail to notice that Mary took precedence of her 
husband everywhere, that she had a more stately seat, 
and that while she ate off gold plate he was served on 
silver. They comforted themselves with the idea that 
all this would be changed when the King had been 
crowned ; but that their Prince, the Emperor's son and 
heir, should take a second place to any one on earth 
filled them with anger, for they had already begun to 
realise that they were not to enter into possession of 



82 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

England as they had hoped. The richness and 
abundance they saw around them made their dis- 
appointment the more bitter. Such a show of plate 
on tables and sideboards as this they had never seen 
before.^ All the platters and dishes were of silver, 
and great buffets loaded with plate stood at both ends 
of the great hall. The sideboard behind the high 
table, at which Philip and Mary sat, with Gardiner far 
off at the end, had upon it a hundred great pieces, 
"with a great gilt clock half as high as a man, and a 
marble fountain with a_rim of gold.3 Before the 
King and Queen stooH Lords Pembroke and Strange 
with sword and mace ; the four services of thirty 
dishes each, far too much for the 158 noble guests, 
were borne in to the sound of minstrelsy ; and after the 
feast the Earl of Arundel presented the ewer of water 
for the King's hands, whilst the Marquis of Win- 
chester bore the napkin. The only Spaniard allowed 
to serve the King was the Duke of Infantado's son, 
Don Inigo de Mendoza, as cupbearer : " as for any of 
the Prince's own stewards doing anything, such a 
thing was never thought of, and not one of us took a 
wand in our own hands, nor does it seem likely we 
ever shall, not even the controller. They had far 
better turn us all out as vagabonds." 2 

After the Queen had pledged her guests in a cup of 
wine, and a herald had proclaimed Philip's new style 
as King of England, France, Naples, and Jerusalem, 
Prince of Spain, and Count of Flanders, the royal pair 
retired to another chamber, accompanied by the 

^ All foreign visitors to England in the sixteenth century 
remarked upon the great profusion of plate used for household 
purposes at the time. 

* Enriquez's narrative. 



THE MARRIAGE FEAST 83 

English and Spanish nobles, where the afternoon ; 
was passed in gallant conversation, though apparently 
with some difficulty to the Spaniards, who were 
desirous of showing their gallantry to the English 
ladies. "We had great trouble in making out their 
meaning, except those who spoke Latin ; so we have 
all resolved not to give them any presents of gloves 
until we can understand them. The gentlemen who 
speak the language are mostly very glad to find that 
we Spaniards cannot do so." 

At the ball that wound up the entertainments, the ' 
same difficulty arising from diverse customs stood in 
the way of intercourse, for the Spanish and English 
dances were different, and the courtiers of the two 
nations could not hit upon a common formula until 
Philip led his wife out to tread a measure in the_ 
German fashion, which was known to both. a...m 

With every day that passed the discontent and 
jealousy grew. Philip himself was charming, treating 
his wife in lover-like fashion, and full of tactful 
affability to the English people. But the more con- 
ciliatory Philip showed himself, the more his Spanish 
courtiers chafed. They had found their position in 
England entirely different from what they had 
expected ; and their hopes of easily dominating the 
country were fading rapidly. The men-at-arms and 
the bodyguard were still confined to their ships at 
Portsmouth and Southampton, forbidden to land 
under pain of death, and were becoming restive ; the 
courtiers themselves and their servants were ridiculed 
in the streets of Winchester, and even waylaid and 
robbed if they ventured into the country ; and yet 
they dared not complain. " After this weary voyage 
these people wish to subject us to some extent to 



:"" ..N.'^ 



84 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

their laws ; for it is a new thing for them to have 
Spaniards in the country, and they wish to feel 
secure."^ "We Spaniards are miserable here, much 

/ worse than in Castile ; and some say that they would 
rather be in the barest stubble field of Toledo than 
here in the groves of Amadis." Another courtier 
writing from Winchester says, " Great rogues infest 
the roads, and have robbed some of us, amongst 
others, the chamberlain of Don Juan Pacheco, from 
whom they took 400 crowns and all his jewelry and 
plate. No trace can be found of the property, nor of 
the four or five boxes missing from the King's 
lodging ; though the Council is scouring the country 
for it. As for the friars, they have had to be lodged 
in the college for their safety, and they bitterly repent 

.having come." 

It was difficult to please proud, disappointed people 
who were ready to disapprove of everything ; and 
when the Duchess of Alba came, three days after the 
marriage, to join her husband, though Mary treated 
her with almost royal honours, the haughty dame and 
her kin were in a chronic state of indignation at the 
position she was obliged to occupy. An amusing 
account of her first visit to Mary on the third day 
after the wedding 2 does not suggest any lack of 
ceremony, though the lodgings assigned to her may 
not have been so sumptuous as she thought fit. The 
Duchess was conducted to the Bishop's palace by the 

^ Philip had sent a Spanish magistrate, Alcalde Bribiesca, to 
England before him, to dispose of cases in his own following. 
The English were bitterly jealous of this, and refused to acknow- 
ledge any jurisdiction for him. 

= Enriquez's narrative. The narrator was a kinsman of the 
Duchess. 



MARY AND THE DUCHESS OF ALBA 85 

Countesses of Pembroke and Kildare and the Earl of 
Bedford, and the Queen advanced almost to the door 
of the presence chamber to meet her. The Duchess 
knelt, and the Queen, falling in her efforts to raise 
her, courtesied almost as low, and kissed her upon the 
mouth, which she usually did only to those of the 
blood royal. She then led the Duchess to the dais, 
and seated herself upon the floor, inviting her guest to 
do likewise. But the latter refused to sit on the floor 
until the Queen sat upon a chair. This the Queen 
would not do, but sent for two stools as a compromise, 
upon one of which she sat and invited the Duchess to 
take the other, instead of which the Duchess then sat 
upon the floor, whereupon the Queen left her stool 
and also sat upon the floor ; and after an almost 
interm.inable friendly wrangle, both ladies settled 
down on the stools, their conversation being inter- 
preted by the Marquis de las Navas, as Mary, 
although she understood Spanish, did not speak it. 
When the Earl of Derby was presented to the 
, Duchess, she was horrified at his offering to salute 
her in the usual English fashion by kissing her lips, 
and she drew back from him in hot indignation, 
though hardly in time to avoid contact. But as the 
lady haughtily expatiated to her own people after- 
wards upon the uncouth fashion, she declared that the 
Earl had only just managed to reach her cheek. 

By the last day of July most of the English gentry 
had gone home for the present, the Spaniards being 
distributed about Winchester and Southampton, 
whilst the troops were only awaiting a fair wind to 
carry them to Flanders. With a comparatively small 
suite the Queen and King set forth on the 31st July 
for Basing House, fifteen miles away, the seat of Lord 



S6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Winchester, the Lord Treasurer, and so by short stages 
to Reading, Windsor, and Richmond, where they 
remained until the 17th August. In the meanwhile 
the impatience of the Spaniards at their position in 
England grew intolerable, and the Duke of Medina- 
Celi, the premier noble, and of royal descent, was the 
first to insist upon immediate release with permission 
to join the Emperor in Flanders. Within a few days 
eighty other hidalgos had demanded similar licence, 
and by the time Richmond was reached the only 
Spanish nobles in attendance upon Philip were Alba, 
Feria, Olivares, Pedro be Cordova, and three gentle- 
men, amongst whom was the indefatigable letter- 
writer, Pedro Enriquez, whose narrative of the events i 
is so expressive of the lack of community between the 
two peoples. Not only were the manners of the 
English ladies and their dresses unbecoming in Spanish 
eyes, and the English food coarsely excessive, but the 
political institutions of the country appeared to them, 
used as they were to the absolute monarchy of 
Castile, to be almost Republican in their hard 
limitation of the power of the Sovereign. 

*' Their Majesties " (writes Pedro Enriquez from 
Richmond) "are the happiest married couple in the 
world, and are more in love with each other than 
I can write here. The King never leaves her, and 
on the road he rides by her side, helping her to 
mount and dismount. They sometimes dine together 
in public, and on Feast days he accompanies her to 
Mass. Although the Queen is not at all beautiful, 
for she is little, and thin rather than stout, she is 
very red and white. She has no eyebrows, she is a 
perfect saint, but she dresses very badly. The ladies 
here all wear farthingales of coloured cloth, without 



DISCONTENT OF THE SPANIARDS 87 

silk, their outer garments being of coloured damask, 
satin, or velvet, but very badly made. Some of them 
wear velvet shoes, but most of them kid. They wear 
black stockings, and even show their legs, some 
of them up to the knees, at least whilst they are 
riding, for their skirts are not long enough. They 
look quite indelicate when they are travelling thus, 
and even when they are seated. They are not at 
all beautiful, nor are they graceful in dancing, 
which with them consists simply of prancing and 
trotting. I None of the Spanish gentlemen are in 
love with them or think anything of them, nor they 
of the Spaniards. They are not worth troubling 
about, or feasting much, or spending money upon, 
which is a good thing for the Spaniards. All the 
rejoicing here consists of eating and drinking. The 
Queen spends in food 300,000 ducats a year. The 
whole of the Lords of the Council — thirteen of them — 
feed in the palace, as do the Officers of State, the 
Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, the Master 
of the Horse, and the King's English household 
with all their wives. The ladies and their servants .' 
and the households of all the courtiers and two 
hundred guards all live in the palace as well. 
Each officer has a cook to look after his food in 
the Queen's kitchens. There are eighteen kitchens, 
and there is such a hurly-burly in them that each 
one is a veritable hell. So that, notwithstanding the 
greatness of these palaces, . . . and the smallest of 
the four we have seen has more rooms and better 
ones than the Alcazar of Madrid, the crowds in them 
are so great as to be hardly contained. . . . The 

^ This reminds one of Queen Elizabeth's dancing, which was 
praised as " high and disposedly." 



88 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

ordinary consumption in the palace every day is 
from eighty to a hundred sheep, with a dozen fat 
oxen and dozen and a half of calves, besides vast 
quantities of game, poultry, venison, wild boar, and 
rabbits ; whilst, as for the beer, they drink more in 
the summer than the river would hold in Valladolid. 
The ladies and some of the gentlemen put sugar 
into their wine. The noise and bustle in the palace 
are dreadful. And notwithstanding the vast number 
of rooms, they have never given to the Duchess of 
Alba a chamber in the palace. They are the most 
ungrateful people ever seen. Not even in the 
villages where we stay — and each one has a village — 
do they give to the Duke and Duchess a house to 
themselves, or the best one. They have fine trouble 
over their lodgings, as if it were not enough to 
prevent them from serving in their offices without 
housing them badly." 

Already the courtiers saw that the chance of 
Philip being allowed to dominate England in conse- 
quence of his marriage was a slender one, but the 
King himself, in his patient, prudent way, persevered. 
His personal influence over his wife grew stronger 
every day, and when later she gave him hopes of 
the birth of an heir, a new prospect for the future 
seemed to open to him. The Londoners were as 
yet still almost in a panic at the coming of the 
Spanish King, and the most exaggerated ideas with 
regard to the number of armed men he would bring 
with him prevailed, artfully fostered by Noailles 
and the Protestant party. On the eve of the state 
entry of the royal pair into London the appearance 
of affairs was unpromising enough, as may be seen 
by Pedro Enriquez's letter dated on the 17th August. 



DISCONTENT OF THE SPANIARDS 89 

"The English cannot bear the sight of the 
Spaniards : they would rather see the devil. They 
rob us, even in the towns, and on the road none of 
us dare to stray for a couple of miles for fear of 
being robbed. A body of Englishmen on one 
occasion plundered and beat no less than fifty 
Spaniards. The Councillors know all about it, but 
they shut their eyes. The number of thieves in the 
country is quite incredible. They go about sometimes 
twenty together. There is neither justice nor fear 
of God. . . . For us there is no justice at all. The 
King commands us to raise no questions, but whilst 
we are here to put up with everything and suffer 
all their spite without a word. So, of course, they 
treat us badly and despise us. When we have 
complained to Bribiesca (the magistrate) and to the 
ambassadors, they tell us that it is to his Majesty's 
interest that we should overlook everything. This 
marriage will have been of small use if this Queen 
does not have a child, of which I am not at all sure. 
When we were. in Castile they said that as soon as his 
Highness was King of England we should be masters 
of France. The opposite is the case, for the French 
are now stronger and more aggressive than ever in 
Flanders. . . . Kings in this country do not command 
more than if they were subjects. The real rulers 
are the Councillors, who are not only masters of 
the country but masters of the King as well. They 
are all lords, some enriched by the plunder of the 
monasteries, some by inheritance, but they are much 
more feared and reverenced than the Sovereign. 
They say now that they will not let his Highness 
go unless the Queen and they please, as this realm 
is quite big enough for a King without any others. 



90 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Seeing what they are, I should not wonder if they 
do it, . . . for they know how hard pressed we are in 
Flanders and are glad of it ; . . . they would not care 
a farthing if Flanders were lost, and his Majesty with 
it. The King and Queen enter London to-morrow, 
and I am sure we ought not to do so, seeing the way 
they are treating the Spaniards already there. Not 
only do they not provide lodgings for them, insulting 
them as if they were savages, but they rob them 
in the inns. As for the friars who came with his 
Majesty, they had better have stayed at home, for^ 
these English are so wicked and godless that they 
even maltreat friars, and these dare not leave their 
lodgings. Don Pedro de Cordova and his nephew, 
Don Antonio, are knights, and the people wanted 
to strip them of their habits the other day, making 
fun of them and asking them why they wore those | 
crosses on their coats." 

On the day that this was written Philip and ; 
Mary and their Court in state barges rowed from 
Richmond to Southwark, where they landed at the 
Bishop of Winchester's house, and after killing a fat 
buck in Southwark Park, slept at the palace which 
stood upon the site of the present London Bridge 
Station, in order to start betimes in the morning of 
the next day across London Bridge, and so through 
the capital to Whitehall. All the fifty gibbets in the 
streets upon which Wyatt's men had hanged were 
cleared away ; the heads of the noble malefactors on 
the spikes at the Bridge-foot were no longer to be 
seen. All that paint and gilt and pageantry and 
pleasant looks could do to make the dour Londoners 
think well of the Queen's Consort was done. Gog 
and Magog in new suits stood at the drawbridge that 



PHILIP ENTERS LONDON 91 

spanned the space from London Bridge end to the 
Southwark shore. Triumphs stood at the street 
corners, one of the first, that in Gracechurch Street, 
containing the maladroit statue of Henry VIII. with 
the Bible labelled Verbiim Dei in his hand, that 
so much moved Bishop Gardiner's wrath. ^ Past 
kneeling aldermen and velvet-clad guildsmen, and with 
a great train of splendid courtiers, Philip and his 
English wife rode through the silent crowds, whilst 
the guns of the White Tower thundered what was 
at the same time a salute to the King and a warning 
to the people. The official greetings were, as usual, 
extravagantly fulsome. That borne by Gog and 
Magog is thus translated — 

" O Noble Prince, sole hope of Caesar's side, 
By God appointed all the world to guide, 
Right harteley welcome art thou to our land. 
The archer Britayne yieldeth thee her hand ; 
And noble England openeth her bosom 
Of hartie affection for to bid thee welcome : 
But chiefly London doth her love vouchsafe, 
Rejoicing that her Philip has come safe. 
She seeith her citizens love thee on each side 
And trusts they shall be happy of such a guide, 
And al do thinke that thou art sent to their citie 
By th' only means of God's paternal pitie, 
So that their minde, voice, study, power and will, 
Is only set to love thee, Philip, still" — * 

and from Gracechurch to Whitehall tributes in Latin 
verse even more eulogistic than this greeted the man 
whose very presence the great mass of the people had 
been taught to dread. All the Philips that ever lived 

^ Queen Jane and Queen Mary (Camden Society), Foxe's 
Acts and Monuments, and other contemporary chronicles. 
= John Elder's Letter, Camden Society. 



92 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

were dwarfed, he was told, by such a paragon of 
excellence as himself; Orpheus had not such power 
to move as by his eloquence could this reticent, 
mumbling Philip, who spoke but little of any language 
but his own. 

'' In like case now, thy grace of speech so franke, 
Doth comfort us whose minds afore were bleak 
And therefore England giveth thee harty thanke 
Whose chiefest joy is to hear thee PhiHp speke."' 

Mary herself could see no evil in her husband, 
and we are told that she was highly gratified 
at all this dithyrambic praise of him. As they 
dismounted at Whitehall Gate, and she led him, 
all smiles, into the great presence chamber, Mary 
and Philip seemed to onlookers an ideally happy 
couple, notwithstanding the difference in their ages. 
Ruy Gomez, writing on the 24th August to Eraso 
in Spain, says : " The King entertains the Queen 
excellently, and well knows how to pass over 
what is not attractive in her for the sensibility of the 
flesh. He keeps her so pleased that verily when 
they were together the other day alone she almost 
made love to him and he answered in the same 
fashion. As for these gentlemen {i.e., the English 
nobles), his behaviour towards them is such that 
they themselves confess that they never yet had a 
King in England who so soon won the hearts of 
all men." 2 

Philip, indeed, had by his tact and amiability already 
begun to break down the hatred and distrust that had 
heralded his approach. At the period of the state 

^ John Elder's Letter, Camden Society. 
=^ MSS. Simancas, Estado 808. 



PHILIP'S TACTFULNESS 93 

entry into London, a diarist writing in the Tower 
of London no doubt only reflected the general feeling 
of apprehension when he wrote : " At this time there 
were so many Spaniards in London ; that a man should 
have met in the street for one Englishman about 
four Spaniards, to the great discomfort of the English 
nation. The Halls (i.e., of the City companies) taken 
up for the Spaniards." ^ In actual fact the number 
of Spanish servants and followers left to Philip at the 
time was very few — less than a dozen noblemen with 
their respective households, probably not more than 
two or three hundred people at most ; and as time 
wore on, and it was seen that no attempt was made 
by Philip and his countrymen to interfere with the 
English, the influence of the King personally being 
recognised as invariably on the side of conciliation, 
a more equable frame of mind became general. News 
had come that the Emperor and his son had detained 
Cardinal Pole on the way to England, and had vetoed 
the extreme Papal policy with which he had at first 
been entrusted ; and it was seen also that Mary her- 
self, as well as her husband, assumed a desire to avoid 
drawing England into hostility with France, which 
was the great fear of the English people. 

Noailles had not been bidden to the marriage, and 
had only been coldly and tardily invited to the state 
entry, which invitation he refused. But on the 21st 
August, whilst the Queen was at Whitehall, the French 
ambassador could hardly avoid offering some form 
of congratulation, for it was of the highest importance 
that England should not be driven to espouse the 
Emperor's war. Noailles was as grudging as possible 
in his felicitations, dryly commenting upon the fact 
^ Queen Jane and Queen Mary. 



94 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

that he had not been asked to the wedding, but 
hoped that it would not interfere with the friend- 
ship between England and France. Mary was most 
emphatic in her assurance that the peace would never 
be broken on her side, and as the ambassador left the 
Queen's presence, somewhat reassured, he turned to 
Bishop Gardiner, who was conducting him, and said 
that if there was no objection he would like to salute 
Philip also. The Bishop was delighted, and conducted 
Noailles at once to the King, to whom the ambassador 
expressed a hope that the peace which had existed 
so long between England and France would not be 
imperilled by the coming of a Spanish Consort to 
England. He, for his part, would do his best to 
prevent any rupture. Philip called Gardiner to him 
and, speaking in Latin, told him to reply to Noailles, 
that although he understood French he did not speak 
it. " He had sworn," he said, " both before and after 
his arrival in England, to maintain all the friendships 
and alliances existing between this and other countries, 
and he would keep his word faithfully. For his part 
the peace should not be broken so long it served the 
interests of England." ' 

Noailles partly suspected what to us now is clear, 
namely, that all this suavity and tolerance on the part 
of the Prince of the proudest nation on earth was 
only a part of the deep-laid plan of the Emperor 
to obtain for his son the full control of English policy^ 
that the marriage treaty had withheld from him. 
Mary probably suspected this as little as any one. 
Her position was extremely difficult. She was by 
this time really in love with her husband, and was 
deeply desirous of pleasing him ; she was anxious 
* Ambassades de Noailles, vol. iii. 311. 



PHILIP'S STATESMANSHIP 95 

for the aggrandisement of Spain, which would mean, 
she thought, the triumph of the Church over heresy 
in Europe, and the consoHdation of her own throne. 
But she knew that her people dreaded above all 
things being dragged into a war with their nearest 
neighbour in a quarrel which did not concern them : 
she was an English Queen determined, so far as in 
her lay, to govern for the benefit of her country, 
and to her the only road to safety seemed to strive 
her hardest to bring about a peace between the two 
antagonists before England was involved in the war. 
Pole had also been entrusted by the Pope with the 
mission of pacifying the Emperor and Henry II., and 
was as earnest in his efforts to do so as was Mary 
herself. From Brussels, where he had been kept chaf- 
ing impotently, he had gone to Paris on his mission of 
peace, but the French arms were on the whole in 
the ascendant at the time, and he returned to Flanders 
unsuccessful.^ 

These efforts of Mary, Pole, and Gardiner, to recon- 
cile France and Spain, received no active help from 
Philip and his father. The object of the Emperor was 
to cripple France by the aid of England, not to patch 
up another temporary peace with her, and the whole 
tendency of the Imperial policy was to obtain complete 
control over England as the first step to this principal 
object. The Emperor had always used religion when 
necessary as an instrument for political ends, and it 
is not surprising that the English Catholic Churchmen 
should regard his present attitude towards the Catholic 
party as inconsistent. Gardiner, Pole, Bonner, and 

* Letters from both Mary and Pole to the King of France 
advocating the conclusion of Peace are in Ambassades de 
Noailles, vol. iii. 323-4. 



96 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

the rest of them, who had never yearned for the 
Spanish connection, thought, perhaps correctly, that 
they could have restored England to the Church more 
speedily and safely if they had been unencumbered 
by the unpopular marriage. Mary, for whom the 
question was complicated by considerations of her 
personal maintenance upon the throne, thought other- 
wise, and wisely the Churchmen had made the best 
of the position. But they had no intention, if they 
could help it, of slackening in their own purpose, or 
of allowing the restoration of their faith in England 
to be retarded or imperilled for the political interests 

^of the Emperor ; and the harsh action of Bonner 
particularly, supported as it was by Gardiner, caused 
bitter complaints amongst the English people, and 
something approaching dismay in the Spanish party 
of Mary's Council. 

i Throughout the home and eastern countries^ where 
Protestantism was strong, the action of the priests 
gave rise to constant brawls, the actors of which 
were unfortunately not proceeded against by the 
civil authorities but by ecclesiastics on the charge 
of heresy. Philip, by means of his friends on the 
Council, did his best to discourage these tactics, 
for which he saw he would unjustly have to suffer 
the unpopularity. Whilst Philip and his wife were 
living at Hampton Court, in September, there was 
a wild rumour in London that twelve thousand 
Spanish troops were on their way to land in England 
and seize the Crown, ^ and almost simultaneously 
people indignantly whispered that the Archbishopric 

_of Canterbury was to be given to a Spanish friar. 
The most extravagant false news, too, was current 
* Queen Jane and Queen Mary. 



RELIGIOUS TROUBLES 97 

that many leading noblemen and Councillors had 
been proclaimed traitors, amongst them Pembroke, 
Shrewsbury, Westmorland ; that Dr. Petre had 
been dismissed from the Council ; that the Marquis 
of Winchester had been forced to give Basing 
House to the Queen ; that the King and Queen, 
in violation of the ordinary English traditions, had 
become inaccessible to the lieges ; ^ and much else of 
the same sort, evidently designed to keep up the 
irritation against the Spanish Consort, who, for his 
part, was using every means to ingratiate himself with 
his poor faded wife 2 and her suspicious subjects. 

It is obvious that, so far as religion alone was 
concerned, the great majority of English people 
would have been ready without demur to accept 
Catholicism again if it had come without the foreign 
mark upon it, and the moderative policy of the 
Emperor was dictated solely by the political aim 
of conciliating the minority, who it was thought 
would be most strongly opposed to Spanish influence. 
For this the Churchmen cared nothing, whilst the 
Protestants and French party, instead of being con- 
ciliated by the King's attitude, naturally seized upon 
the ecclesiastical prosecutions, which he deprecated, 
still further to discredit him. Pole in the meanwhile 

^ Queen Jane and Mary, and Holingshed. 

^ We get at this time (October, 1554), whilst the royal couple 
were at Hampton Court, a glimpse of their life together. " As 
for newes you shall understand that the King's and Queen's 
Majesties be in helth and merry, whom I did see daunce 
togethers uppon Sunday night at the Court, where was a brave 
maskery of cloth of gold and silver apparailed in mariners 
garments, the chief dper whereof I think was my lord Admiral." 
— Francis Yaxley to Sir W. Cecil, Landsdown MSS. (Cotton), 
vol. iii. 44. 



98 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

was growing restive. He was a man of high and 
unselfish aims, a true Catholic as well as a true 
Englishman, and he resented his exclusion from his 
own country at the bidding of a foreign potentate 
after his long exile for the cause of his faith. His 
letters of exhortation to Mary and to Philip are 
throughout inspired by the Churchman's zeal, and not 
infrequently by scorn of the opportunist policy which 
was, in his view, hampering the prompt and complete 
return of his country to the Church.^ 

Almost from Mary's accession Cardinal Pole had 
been held back from his mission by the action of 
the Emperor, thanks mainly to the complaisancy of 
the new Pope Julius III. The great difficulty was 
1 the question of the restitution of the Church property 
which had been confiscated in the previous reigns. 
There were few noble courtly families in England 
which had not indeed been enriched from this source ; 
and the Emperor expressed his opinion to Pole that 
the English people cared neither for one form of 
faith or the other, so long as they could keep their 
property. 2 " Pole," said the Venetian ambassador at 
Brussels, "might beg for permission to go to England 
for ten thousand years without avail, unless he went 
with the briefs confirming the alienation of the 
Church properties : for if the Church insists upon 
reclaiming them disorder will prevail throughout the 
country." 

At last the Cardinal had to accept the inevitable, 
not without some bitterness of heart,3 and steps 

- Venetian Calendar. = Ibid. 

3 In the Venetian Calendar, 2ist September, 1554, there is 
a dignified letter from Pole to Philip reproaching him for 
allowing him, a Prince of the Church, an Englishman exiled 



THE COMING OF POLE 99 

were taken in the Parliament, which met at West-._ 
minster early in November, to reverse the act of-j_ 
attainder against him. His coming was regarded' 
in some sense by the country as that of a restraining 
force upon the dreaded Spanish influence in the 
English Councils. He was known to be single- 
minded in his attachment both to the Church and 
to England. He was not ambitious, and had nothing 
to gain by serving as a tool for anti- English forces, 
whilst his rank, his ability, and his good repute 
promised that his authority would be great, even if 
necessary, against the foreign King-Consort. On 
the 5th November, 1554, a deputation was despatched 
by Mary, consisting of Lords Paget and Hastings 
and Sir William Cecil, to invite Pole to England, 
not ostensibly as Legate, but as Cardinal and 
ambassador, on condition that the Pope would 
consent to the present owners of the ecclesiastical 
lands being left unmolested. Renard had already 
been sent over to Flanders to persuade Pole of the 
need for this proviso, and had returned successful^^. 
The Cardinal was ready, and rejoiced greatly when 
Sir John Mason, the English ambassador, told him 
the news ; though, '* Marry, quoth he, you know 
I am at this present, as it were, in another's 
ward [keeping]. — I must depart when it please the 
Emperor, who is not at all times to be spoken 
withal. I have already one sent to M. d' Arras 
{i.e., Granvelle) to be my mean to have access 
to his Majesty to take my leave. . . . Marry, the 
truth is that they have had as yet no news out of 

for Mary's sake half a lifetime, and a Legate of the head of the 
Church, thus to knock at the door of his country unheeded by 
a Catholic King. 



loo TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

England of the Queen's determination. "^ Mason 
assured the Cardinal that it was all settled and that 
the embassy named had been despatched to fetch 
him. 

Ttiis news Mason also carried to the Emperor, 
who was better and brighter than he had been for 
years, for he knew that Pole would now go only 
to carry out his policy, so far as regarded restitution, 
and he was already full of hope that a child was 
to be born to Philip and Mary. That, indeed, 
would be to fix the hand of Spain upon England 
for at least long enough for his great purpose to be 
effected. In answer to an inquiry as to the Queen's 
state, somewhat too coarsely worded to be quoted 
verbatim here, Mason was able on this occasion to 
inform the Emperor that : "I understand to my 
great joy and comfort that her garments wax very 
strait." " I never doubted, quoth the Emperor, of 
the matter ; but that God, who had for her wrought 
so many miracles, could make the same perfect by 
assisting nature to His good and most desired work. 
And I warrant it shall be, quoth he, a man child. Be 
it man or woman, quoth I, welcome shall it be : for 
by that shall we come to some certainty, to whom 
God shall appoint by succession the government of 
our State. . . . Doubt not, quoth he, God will 
provide both with fruit and otherwise : so as I trust 
to see yet that realm to return to a great piece of 
that surety and estimation that I have seen it in 
my time." 2 Here, indeed, the wish was father to 
the thought. For some weeks past it had been 

I Mason to the Queen and King, 9th November, Foreign 
Calendar. 
- Ibid. 



POLE'S ARRIVAL loi 

whispered at Hampton Court that the Queen was 
with child, though Mary herself refused to confirm 
it or otherwise ; but to the Spanish party such a 
fact was all-important, and the Emperor's jubilation 
was heart-felt. Noailles, on the other hand, scoffed 
incredulously at what he asserted was only a con- 
spiracy to cheat the English people into giving Philip 
greater power and importance in the country, and 
he quotes as an instance of the way in which the 
hope was regarded by English people, a scurrilous 
placard on the subject which, he says, was nailed tq^ 
the door of Whitehall Palace. 

Cardinal Pole, already ailing and elderly, was 
carried in his litter with great ecclesiastical state from 
Brussels to Calais, and crossed the Channel as soon as 
news reached him that the Parliament at Westminster 
had reversed his attainder. Travelling by road, as 
usual, from Dover to Gravesend, he found awaiting 
him at the latter port King Philip's own state barge 
to convey him to Westminster. On his way to 
London, on Saturday, 24th November, he was met by 
all the English Catholic Bishops and the Lords of 
the Council in their barges, and then, leading the 
imposing procession with uplifted crosier before him, 
the English Cardinal, in his rochet, tippet, and scarlet 
hat, passed up the London river to the palace of his 
royal ancestors. 

King Philip was at dinner at Whitehall when 
news came to him that the Cardinal's barge had 
shot the dangerous rapids formed by the narrow 
arches of London Bridge. Rising from the table 
at once the King descended to the landing-stage 
of the Palace as the state barge was approaching 
it. With uncovered head and respectful mien Philip 



I02 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

greeted the great English Churchman with more 
honour than he might have shown to any sovereign 
prince, leading him on his right hand through the 
alleys and galleries to the entrance to the hall, where 
at the head of the stairs stood Queen Mary. Making 
a profound obeisance to the huge uplifted cross which 
preceded her husband and Pole, she advanced to meet 
them, Pole kneeling at her approach. Curtseying 
low and kissing her kinsman the Queen assisted him 
to rise, and then between him and her husband she 
led the way to the canopy, where for half an hour in 
polyglot converse, for Pole had lost some of his 
English, and Philip knew little Italian, Mary must 
have been for once in her life happy. ^ 

Nothing could exceed the honour shown by the 
Sovereigns to Pole, for it was Philip's policy to win 
him over entirely to his side, and Mary was over- 
joyed at the prospect of the full reconciliation of 
her country with the Papacy on conditions that 
seemed to promise general harmony. The people, 

,.too, who knew Pole's history, welcomed him warmly. 

THe, like Mary herself, had been unjustly used, and 
his family judicially murdered ; he was virtuous, 
upright, and honest,^ and above all, in the eyes 
of the populace, he represented an English force 
strong enough to champion the cause of his country- 

,jnen, if needs be, against the Spanish faction. Pole 

' Enriquez's narrative (Sociedad de Bibliofilos) and John 
Elder's letter, Camden Society. Queen Jane and Queen 
Mary. 

' John Elder says that, as an instance of Pole's good repute, 
that when he (Elder) was in Rome it was a common saying there, 
not only amongst Englishmen, but amongst Italians as well, 
" Polus Cardinalis natione Anglus pietatis et literarum testimonio 
dignus, non qui Polus Anglus, sed qui Polus angelus vocetur.^' 




CARDINAL REGINALD POLE, PAPAL LEGATE AND ARCHBISHOP OF 
CANTERBURY 

AFTER A PAINTING BY SEBASTIANO DEL TIOMBO 



RECEPTION OF POLE 103 

was lodged at Lambeth Palace, from which the 
unhappy Cranmer had been sent to the Tower, and 
on the day of the Cardinal's arrival in London, Mary T 
offered him the primacy, an offer which Pole for the 
moment put aside until, as he said, he had done his 
errand as papal ambassador. For the next three 
days Pole and the Sovereigns were closeted for 
hours together settling the preliminaries for the 
formal return of England to the papal fold, and 
Philip himself on one occasion, breaking through 
all the traditions of his house, crossed alone to 
Lambeth and remained with Pole for the entire 
afternoon. 

At length, on Wednesday, 28th November, all was 
ready, and in the great hall of the Palace the 
assembled Lords and Commons were gathered in the 
presence of the Queen and King to receive the 
Pope's representative. Outside the people were still 
saying — to the horror of the Spanish listeners — that the 
Pope was only a man, after all, and could do no more 
than other men ^ ; but here, in Mary's Parliament, 
no inharmonious note was sounded, as the Lord 
Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, rose and introduced the 
Cardinal as the messenger from the Apostolic Pontiff. 
Pole, speaking from the second stage of the dais just 
beyond the canopy, begged in Latin permission of the 
Queen to address the assembly in English ; which 
granted, he spoke first feelingly of his long unjust exile 
and the persecution of his House, his attachment to the 
land of his birth through all his trouble, and then he 
launched into an eloquent appeal for the reunion of 
England to the Church. He praised the Emperor 
for his sturdy defence of orthodoxy ; but said that 
^ Enriquez's narrative. 



I04 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

for some inscrutable reason God had not allowed him 
to achieve his end. " But," continued Pole, " I can 
well compare him [i.e., the Emperor] to David, 
whiche thoughe he were a manne elected of God, yet 
for that he was contaminate with bloode and war 
could not builde the temple of Jerusalem, but left the 
finishing thereof to his son Solomon, which was Rex 
pacificus. So may it be thoughte that the appeasing 
of controversies of religion in Christendom is not 
appointed to this Emperor but rather to his son who 
shal perfourme the building that his father hath 
begun." I 

When the long and moving extempore speech was 
finished, the Queen desired Gardiner to express her 
thanks and congratulations to the Cardinal, and to 
desire Parliament to consider deeply his weighty 
words. On that very day, as Noailles insisted for the 
purpose of forwarding Pole's mission, official letters 
were despatched in the Queen's name ordering that 
thanksgiving and rogations should be offered in all 
the churches for her pregnancy, now openly acknow- 
ledged. Whatever the malicious Frenchman may 
have said, it is quite incredible that Mary herself did 
not believe the assertion of her condition, nor is it 
likely that Philip thought otherwise, seeing the assur- 
ances which, even in private letters, he gave to his 
father on the subject.^ The Queen's subjects, too, 
rejoiced exceedingly at the news, for a disputed 
succession seemed to portend if Mary died childless. 
But, in any case, the announcement was most oppor- 
tune both for the success of Pole's mission, and for 
another mission to be mentioned presently, which was 

^ John Elder's letter. 

2 Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, vol. iv. 



RECONCILIATION OF ENGLAND 105 

nearer the Emperor's heart, and he had entrusted 
secretly to Paget when he had gone to Flanders to 
escort Pole to England. _ 

On Thursday, 29th November, 1554, during the dis- 1 
cussion of the ecclesiastical question in the House of 
Lords, the lay peers roundly blamed the Bishops for 
all the schism and trouble that had occurred. If they 
had not been poltroons, and had refused to humour 
King Henry in his repudiation of his wife ^ and his 
defiance of the Holy See all would have been well, 
said the laymen ; but recriminations apart, both Lords 
and Commons promptly adopted, almost unanimously, 
a resolution repealing the acts that separated England 
from the Papacy, and authorising a commission of 
twenty-four members of both Houses to beg the 
Queen's approval of the resolution, and to present to 
the papal ambassador the submission of the nation to 
the head of the universal Church, begging for absolu- 
tion and readmittance to the fold. The next day, St. 
Andrew's Day, 30th November, the formal ceremony 
was held in the Palace of Whitehall. That morning 
Philip had gone to Mass at Westminster Abbey in 
state with 100 German, 100 Spanish, and English 
guards, all in new uniforms, 50 Flemish archers, and 
150 smartly-clad pages, as if to mark the occasion as 
one of special significance, and at five o'clock in the 
afternoon the Cardinal in his pontifical vestments 
rowed across from Lambeth, the King receiving him 
at the foot of the Palace stairs. In the presence 
chamber the Commissioners of Parliament presented 
their petition to the Sovereigns through Lord Chan- 
cellor Gardiner. Then the King and Queen rose, 
and crossing to the Cardinal's chair, in attitude of 
^ Enriquez's narrative. 



io6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

supplication asked him as the Pope's ambassador to 
receive the submission of England ; after which the 
Sovereigns, having returned to their thrones, Pole's 
powers from the Pope were read, and the Cardinal in 
an English discourse heartily welcomed the strayed 
sheep into the fold again. ^ Kneeling, the whole 
assembly received absolution and the apostolic blessing, 
and England was recognised as a Catholic country 
again. 

To spectators of the scene, and especially to 
Spaniards, this seemed to be an occurrence which for 
importance surpassed all others of the time. Spain 
burst out into uncontrollable rejoicing, and Philip, the 
man who his countrymen thought had performed this 
miracle by God's mercy, was more revered than ever. 
Now indeed, with the almost certainty of a son to be 
born and to succeed as King of a Catholic England in 
close union with Spain, the Frenchmen must rest 
content with a secondary place and the House of 
Burgundy- Habsburg must lead. This view, to some 
extent, was one that it suited Philip himself to promote 
in England, and he left no stone unturned to impress 
upon his wife's subjects the profound significance of 
_the formal reconciliation of the country to the Papacy ; 
a power which, when it had suited his father and 
himself, they had flouted again and again, and which, 
within a year under the new Pope, Paul IV., was to 
denounce them both with invective more bitter than 
was applied to the worst of heretics. 

On the 2nd December, in great state, Philip rode 

along Fleet Street and up Ludgate Hill to St. Paul's, 

accompanied by the w^hole Court. From Lambeth 

Pole had gone by water to Paul's Wharf, and thence in 

^ Enriquez's narrative. 



THE SUBMISSION OF ENGLAND 107 

procession with crosses, banners, and censers to the 
Cathedral, where he awaited the King's coming with 
the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London. Side by ' 
side the King and Cardinal, with a glittering train, 
passed up the nave and out at the east end to St. 
Paul's Cross, where, we are told, " with all the Lords 
of the Council and with such an audience of people 
as was never seen in that place before,"^ fiery 
Gardiner preached a sermon upon the words of St. 
Paul, " Brethren, know ye, that it is time we arose 
from slumber " ; in which he exhorted his hearers to 
shake off the evil dream of the past and salute the 
new dawn. But not exhortation alone occupied 
Gardiner's oration, for he hinted that all the ruin and 
misery that England had suffered, *'all the abominable 
heresies, synistrate and erroneous opinions, tumults 
and insurrections," were owing to the " lack of 
restraint " that had permitted such evils without due 
punishm.ent. For, once more into the hands of the 
priests, the rod had been delivered, and Gardiner had 
no mind that it should lie idle. The famous sermon 
was a threat to England, and the people who had 
spoken lightly of the Pope for the last twenty years 
looked askance not only at the Churchman who 
threatened, but at King Philip, whose furthest thought 
it was for the moment to light the fires of religious 
persecution in the country, the enmity and suspicion 
of which he was striving to lull to rest. 

We are told by Philip's watchful gentleman-in- 
waiting that he enjoyed his dinner well after Gardiner's 
sermon, but the gentleman-in-waiting saw the surface 
only. Philip was glad to have England back again 

^ Michaeli says that ten thousand people Hstened to the 
sermon. 



io8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

within the fold, though that was not the end, but 
the means for him. Two days afterwards the long- 
delayed Spanish cane tourney, perhaps the only one 
ever held in England, was celebrated with great pomp 
in the tiltyard at Whitehall. For many weeks the 
bands of Spanish horsemen had been rehearsing the 
mimic battle, in whiph opposing forces dressed in 
splendid uniforms prance and caracol to within a few 
yards of each other at full speed, and then, launching 
cane javelins at their antagonists, wheel suddenly 
away. The Queen and her ladies were dressed in 
cloth of gold with solid sheet-gold coifs, all at the 
King's expense, and the Queen must have been a 
blaze of magnificence in her rich brocade, her over- 
garment of crimson velvet lined with fur, and her 
dress covered entirely with precious stones and sheet 
gold spangles. Twelve thousand people, we are told, 
looked on, as band after band of Spaniards pranced 
into the arena, some in white velvet and gold, some 
in blue and silver, some in black and gold ; and a 
great ball and supper wound up the entertainment. 
Three weeks later, the visit of Philip's heroic young 
cousin, Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, was an occasion 
for further festivities of the same sort, although the 
occasion of his coming was in itself far from a festive 
one. The Prince was in command of the Emperor's 
army, but in the clash of great empires he feared that 
his own smaller interests were going to the wall, as 
indeed they were. The war had prevented him from 
accepting the invitation to Philip's wedding ; but in 
September, 1554, he had sent an embassy headed by 
Count Langosco to London to pray Philip to intercede 
with the Emperor for him. Much of his paternal 
territory was occupied by the French ; he had no 



SAVOY AND ELIZABETH 109 

money even to pay the garrisons of Nice and the 
other fortresses that remained to him, and he foresaw 
the possibiHty that when France and the Emperor 
made peace Savoy might be left in the hands of the 
former. PhiHp was amiable but indefinite in his 
reception of Savoy's embassy in London. A commis- 
sion was sent to invest the Duke with the Order of 
the Garter, and kind assurances of regard were ex- 
changed, but Savoy wanted more than that, and when 
his troops were in winter quarters he managed with 
difficulty to raise enough money to run over personally, 
in the last days of the year 1554, to see his cousin 
Philip and his English wife for the purpose of urging 
his own suit. It is usually assumed that the primary 
object of his visit was to offer his hand to Princess 
Elizabeth, but such was not the case.^ His handsome 
presence and the fame of his military exploits made 
him an attractive guest at Mary's Court, and both the 
King and Queen were very favourably impressed by 
him, Philip, indeed, to a great extent acceding to the 
demands that brought him to London. 

The idea of his marrriage with Elizabeth appears 
first to have come from some of his Piedmontese 
subjects, naturally anxious that the succession to his 
ancient throne should be secured. Writing from 
London in September, 1554, one of his ambassadors 
says that if he were authorised to do so, he would 
propose the match to King Philip. In any case, 
some communication seemed to have passed between 
Philip and the Savoy ambassadors on the subject, and 
when Emmanuel Philibert arrived in London early in 

' Signer Clare tta has published (Pinerolo, 1892) an interest- 
ing series of documents from the Turin Archives giving full 
particulars of the visit. 



no TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

January, the question was further discussed. It was 
a match that would have suited Philip admirably, and 
he was prompt to adopt the idea. Emmanuel Phili- 
bert himself was in no mood for wooing, for the 
French had just captured another of his fortresses, 
Ivrea, and it seemed to him politic to keep himself 
free to marry a French princess, if necessary, as the 
price of his restoration to his domains. Nor were the 
obstacles in England to his marriage with Elizabeth 
slight. To begin with, the Queen was opposed to 
her sister's marriage at all without the consent of 
Parliament, which would certainly refuse to authorise 
a foreign match for the Princess, and especially 
to a dispossessed Prince under the influence of the 
Emperor. Nor did the Queen wish to give to 
Elizabeth the additional importance and power which 
would accrue to her from her marriage with a 
sovereign. Philip, if we are to believe Michaeli, 
was somewhat afraid of his wife, and did not dare 
to press her too far in the matter "as she had a 
terrible and obstinate temper." To the King's 
Confessor, therefore, was entrusted the task of winning 
over Mary. After much trouble he persuaded her so 
far as to get her to promise to speak to the King 
about it the next evening. This she did not do, and 
it was believed that Pole had in the interval dissuaded 
her. The opposition from Elizabeth was even more 
decided. She was quite resolved, she said, neither to 
marry nor to leave England. On the part of Savoy 
also the terms proposed by Philip were held to be 
quite out of the question, including as they did the 
cession to Spain of the fortresses of Nice and Villa- 
franca, in case any children were born to Emmanuel 
Philibert and Elizabeth. It will be seen, therefore, 



SPANISH DISAPPOINTMENT in 

that at this time the match was never probable, and 
though Savoy was lodged in Elizabeth's palace, 
Somerset House in the Strand, the Princess herself 
was not even brought from her seclusion at Wood- 
stock to see him.^ Emmanuel Philibert, impatient to 
be gone, left England, though not empty-handed, to 
resume his turbulent career after a three weeks' stay. 
Philip had to a great extent overcome the personal/ 
unpopularity which at his first coming he had to face ; 
but the fear of the people that, sooner or later, 
England would be dragged by the Imperialists into 
war with France was stronger than ever, and the 
Spanish followers of the King got on no better than 
before with the English. One of the gentlemen-in- 
waiting writes at this time, " We are in a pleasant 
land, but amongst the worst people in the world, at 
least of Christian nations, for these English people are 
terrible enemies of Spain. It is easy to see that by 
the many serious quarrels that take place between us 
and them. Hardly a day passes without a slashing 
match in the Palace between Englishmen and 
Spaniards, and many have been killed on both sides. 
Only last week, in consequence of a fight, they hanged 
three Englishmen and a Spaniard, and every day 
something of the sort happens. . . . We Spaniards go 
about amongst these English people like fools, for 
they are such barbarians that they do not understand 
what we say, nor we them. They will not crown our 
Prince, although he is a King now, nor will they 
acknowledge him as their superior. They say that 
he only came to help to rule the country and to 

' The assertion of so many historians that she came to White- 
hall at Christmas, 1554, is erroneous. She did not come till the 
end of April, long after Savoy's departure. 



112 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

beget a child, and that as soon as the Queen has 
children he can go back to Spain. God send that it 
may be soon, for he would be glad enough, and we 
infinitely more so, to get away from such barbarous 
folk." I To add to the tribulation of these dis- 
appointed courtiers, they found prices in England ten 
times higher than those they were used to, and they 
were almost ruined by their necessary expenses, 
besides being robbed, even of their cloaks, if they 
.ventured out after dark in London. 

To their chagrin, too, they saw great sums of 
Spanish money, sorely needed, they knew, for the 
Emperor's wars, being squandered upon English pur- 
poses. Gresham had been allowed by the Emperor 
to borrow for Mary and export from Spain ;^ 100,000, 
an enormous sum in those days, and one which, 
Gresham wrote, was terribly wanted in the country 
itself. " I am not abell," he wrote, " with my pen to set 
forthe unto you the greate scarsity that is now through 
all Spayne. . ." And he adds later, " I fere that I 
shall be the occasione they shuld all play bankrupt," 
since one great bank had already suspended payment 
in consequence of his operations.^ Apart from this, 
Philip's own guard carried through London to the 

^ At this time (late in 1554) a large number of Spanish 
shopkeepers and artisans had established themselves in London 
under the erroneous belief referred to in an earlier page, that 
the marriage of Philip meant their entering into possession of 
the kingdom. This had been so much resented by the Londoners 
that not only were attacks upon these people constant, as 
recorded by Enriquez and others, but on the 12th October Mary 
had been obliged to issue a decree commanding all Spanish 
tradesmen to shut up their shops. This, of course, was a new 
^source of complaint with them. 
2 Foreign Calendar. 



THE SEED AND THE HARVEST 113 

Tower 97 chests of silver, estimated to contain 
^50,000 for his own expenditure,^ whilst Eraso 
brought 250,000 crowns to England in January, 1555, 
and the gentleman-in-waiting says that not only had 
the King guaranteed a debt of the Queen's of 
250,000 ducats, but he had distributed in bribes and 
pensions to the Councillors and courtiers 30,000 

ducats a year. 

At length, with all these blandishments and prepara- / 
tions, the Emperor and Philip thought after the 
submission of Parliament to the Pope, that the time 
had come when they might endeavour to reap the 
harvest. Paget, in his interview with the Emperor in 
Brussels, had been urged to represent to his col- 
leagues on the English Council that the co-operation 
of their country in his war against the French would 
be of immense benefit to Christendom, and in a long 
memorandum sent by Renard to Philip during the 
session of Parliament, he discussed the various pre- 
texts upon which a war between England and France 
might be precipitated. But Bonner's harsh and 
violent persecution disturbed men's minds. A great 
conspiracy was discovered in the Eastern Counties in 
which some of the Councillors were suspected of being 
implicated, the main object being the marriage and 
elevation to the throne of Courtenay and Elizabeth ; 
and although Parliament passed an Act recognising 
Philip as guardian of his expected heir in case of the 
Queen's death, his own wish to be appointed Regent 
in the event of her death without children, and his 
present recognition and coronation as King, were 
seen to be unrealisable in the state of public feeling, 
and Parliament was dissolved on the i6th January 
' Queen Jane and Queen Mary. 



114 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Still less was it possible to urge seriously that 
England should declare war against France, and, 
thanks to the efforts of Mary and Pole, another 
attempt was made to bring about peace by means of 
a Congress meeting at Calais. 

So far from going to war for the Spaniards, the 
people, indeed, were increasingly inclined to war 
against them. King Philip's countrymen, moreover, 
were far from sharing or even understanding his 
tolerant affability in the face of the unjust suspicion 
and insults to which they were daily subjected. 
Affrays between them and the Londoners were more 
frequent than ever, and although the hanging and 
mutilation of offenders against the peace, English and 
Spanish, was frequent, and Philip himself threatened 
dire punishment to any of his suite who drew a knife 
or shared in a brawl, the national hatred was so 
strong that no penalties could stop the disorders. 
In February, 1555, Renard wrote to the Emperor in 
an alarming strain. He prayed most earnestly to be 
allowed to return home when King Philip went to 
Flanders, which he then intended to do in a few 
weeks. He was certain, he said, that he (Renard) 
would be murdered the moment the King's back was 
turned. The heretics were cursing him for having 
been the cause of bringing the Papists back to 
England, the French party were vowing vengeance 
against him for introducing the hated Spaniards to 
domineer over free Englishmen, the Earl of Arundel 
had sworn to be avenged upon him for frustrating his 
plan to marry his son to Princess Elizabeth, and the 
Duke of Northumberland's sons had already hired 
four assassins to kill him.^ 

^ Papiers d'Etat de Granvelle, vol. iv. 



ENGLISHMEN AND SPANIARDS 115 

In vain Philip urged moderation in the prosecution - 
of heresy, and one of his chaplains, Alfonso de Castro, 
publicly in an outspoken sermon denounced the 
burning of heretics as opposed to the true spirit of 
Christ. But Bonner and Gardiner pursued their stern 
way, and most of the odium of their proceedings fell 
upon the King and his countrymen. The Queen, 
herself in a fool's paradise of hope and joy, thought 
of nothing but the coming glory of maternity. The 
country itself was awaiting the event as one that was 
to decide, so far as could be seen, its future fate. 
Ominous mutterings of the fell bonfires that had 
already begun in Smithfield were common enough, 
and the factions in the Eastern Counties were as active 
as ever beneath the surface, notwithstanding their 
ruthless suppression. The English exiles in France 
were being made much of in the Court of Henry II., 
and loaded with favours, whilst Noailles in London 
kept in close touch with the elements of discontent at 
home. In the circumstances Philip's intention to 
obey his father's summons to Flanders soon after the 
dissolution of Parliament had to be postponed, at least 
until the expected confinement of the Queen in April 
had cleared the air and settled men's minds. 

In the meanwhile Philip continued to do his best' 
to maintain his popularity, counselling prudence to the 
zealous bishops, lavishing money on courtiers, inter- 
ceding gently for Elizabeth and Courtenay, and taking 
active part in the showy military exercises which the 
English loved, but which for him had no attraction. ^ 

^ On occasion of a grand tilting at Whitehall on the 25th 
March twenty gentlemen made a brilliant show, and Philip 
distinguished himself so much that the Queen became anxious 
and apprehensive, sending to beseech him, as he had run 



ii6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

In March, Courtenay from his prison at Fotheringham 
wrote to Philip, saying that, as by the King's inter- 
cession with the Queen so many persons had been 
released, he prayed for his mediation in his favour, 
very submissively beseeching his protection and that 
he would deign to accept his service. This happened 
at the very time that the new conspiracy was dis- 
covered, but Courtenay was almost as dangerous in 
an English prison as free, and, thanks to Pole's 
support of Philip's efforts, and on the understanding 
that he would accompany the English embassy to 
Flanders and Rome, Courtenay was summoned to 
Court and graciously received by the Queen and her 

^husband. 

^ Much more important, and doubtless intended to be 
so by Philip, was his successful intercession for 
Elizabeth. The Princess, as we have seen, was not 
brought to London to receive the visit of her would- 
be suitor, the Duke of Savoy, in January; for her own 
resistance to the match, and Mary's reluctance to 
restore her fully in blood, which would have been 
necessary if her marriage with Savoy was to serve 
Spanish ends, had nipped that plan in the bud. 
But now, in April, to the great delight and surprise 
of the people, the Queen's sister was summoned with 
graciousness from her seclusion at Woodstock to the 
Palace of Whitehall. Michaeli, who was a keen 
observer, attributes her release and presence at Court 
before the expected confinement of the Queen to 
the fear of the Spanish party that in case of Mary's 
death " the King's safety would depend more upon 

so many courses and done enough, not to encounter any 
further risk for her sake. He also attended another grand 
tilt at the weddings of Lords Maltravers and Fitzwalter in the 
following month. 



ELIZABETH AT COURT 117 

her than upon any other person ; not only from his 
hope of being able, with the help of the nobles here 
whom he has gained by rewards, to succeed to the 
Kingdom by marrying her, it being not improbable 
that she herself will incline that way, as she knows 
his behaviour and character ; but even should she 
and the country refuse this, yet by her presence, she 
being in his power, he would be able to secure himself 
against any rising against him and his followers, and 
they might by her means get away safely." ^ 

Elizabeth came very quietly to Hampton Court late 
in April, and was lodged in the apartment which the 
Duke of Alba had recently vacated. It is evident 
that her presence was desired by Philip more for his 
own security than for the sake of the Princess, as she 
only saw her sister and Philip in strict privacy on two 
or three occasions. Whilst in this close seclusion 
Elizabeth had at least one long private interview with 
Philip alone at the Queen's request, his object 
evidently being to induce the Princess to confess her 
fault and throw herself upon her sister's clemency. 
But Elizabeth was wary and would not commit 
herself. When a few weeks afterwards Gardiner on 
his knees urged the same advice upon her, she replied 
that she had not offended and asked no mercy of any 
one. A week later the Queen herself tried her han4 
upon her recalcitrant sister. She had not seen her 
since she sent her to the Tower two years before, 
and when the unexpected summons to the presence 
came to Elizabeth late at night the young Princess 
gave herself up for lost. " Pray forme," she said to 
her attendants as she left the apartment, " for I know 
not whether you will ever see me more." Across the 
^ Venetian Calendar. 



ii8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

dark garden Elizabeth was led between Sir Henry 
Bedingfield and Mistress Clarencius to the foot of a 
small back staircase to the Queen's rooms. Leaving 
her attendant outside, the Princess was conducted by 
Clarencius alone to the Queen's presence in the 
bedchamber. Kneeling, Elizabeth besought her 
sister to believe in her loyalty in spite of calumnies. 
" You will not confess your offence, but stand stoutly 
in your truth ? " asked Mary sternly. " I pray God 
it may so fall out." *' If it doth not," replied the 
Princess, "I request neither favour nor pardon at your 
Majesty's hand." The Queen drily suggested that 
her sister would probably say that she had been 
unjustly punished, but Elizabeth deftly turned the 
point by a fervent reiteration of her dutifulness and 
loyalty, and Mary, apparently somewhat mollified, dis- 
missed her sister not unamiably. 

Foxe, who describes the scene," says that it was 
believed that Philip listened behind the arras to what 
passed at the interview, and "that he showed himself 
a very friend in that matter." Certain it is that on 
several occasions after Elizabeth had succeeded to the 
throne he claimed her gratitude or consideration for 
having on one occasion rescued her from grave peril, 
and it is probable that this may have been the occasion 
referred to. There were many reasons beyond the 
temporary one already mentioned that explain 
Philip's solicitude for Elizabeth's life. Failing Eliza- 
beth, and any possible issue of the Queen, the next 
heir to the English throne by natural law was the 
young Queen of Scots, practically a French princess 
married to the heir of France. Better a thousand 
times for Philip and his House that England should 
^ "Acts and Monuments." 



MARY'S HOPES OF AN HEIR 119 

be ruled even by a heretic friendly to him than by 
the staunchest Catholic under the control of the 
hereditary enemy of the House of Habsburg. It must 
have been clear to him, moreover, by this time that the 
Reformation in England had not been crushed by 
Mary's advent, and that a large proportion of the 
people regarded France as a more desirable friend 
than Spain. Nor could he shut his eyes to Elizabeth's 
popularity, and to the fact that the enemies of his 
faith and his House looked to the young Princess as 
their head. So sagacious a politician would naturally 
endeavour to gain the goodwill, even the disposal 
in marriage, of a person so potentially powerful as 
his young sister-in-law, who, in any case, was likely to 
outlive his wife, and might if well handled perpetuate 
the hold of Spain upon England, now depending upon 
so tenuous a thread. 

On the 30th April there came flying to London 
from Hampton Court the news that the nation's 
prayers had been heard, and that at midnight of the 
29th a male child had been born to the Queen, happily 
and well. Proclamation was made, joy bells rang, all 
business was suspended, and processions from every 
church perambulated the parishes with psalms of 
thanksgiving for so signal a mercy. Public tables 
were spread that all might freely eat and drink their 
fill, whilst bonfires blazed in broad daylight, and the 
people forgot for a moment the grim spectre of 
persecution that might be perpetuated if the news 
was true. But it was not true, and the sad disillusion- 
ment came whilst yet the rejoicings were in full swing. 
It was, said the Catholics, an invention of the enemy 
in order to cause trouble ; but though this was possible, 
for Noailles had never ceased to sneer at the assurance 



I20 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

of the Queen's condition, the open and ostentatious 
preparations for the event that had been made at 
Court were of themselves sufficient reason for the 
rumour of the birth. The occurrence naturally dis- 
tressed Mary, who kept her room thereafter for a time, 
and at once a flood of scurrilous literature was 
surreptitiously circulated in London, calumniating the 
Queen, her husband, and all their friends. ^ 

All through May the country stood on tiptoe of 
expectation for the birth of the prince whose 
coming meant so much apparently for the future 
of Christendom. Mary, still deceiving herself, was 
comforted by the sight of new-born babies brought 
to her whose mothers were, it was said, as old 
and as thin as she. Philip's solicitude, too, knew 
no bounds. Every demonstration of affection was 
lavished upon his wife, and nothing was allowed 
to stand in the way of his anticipated joy. Although 
in deep mourning for his grandmother, Jane the 
Crazy, he ordered that the moment his expected 
son was born all signs of mourning were to be 
abandoned. His father was summoning him in- 
cessantly, and he was yearning furiously to get 
away, but he could not leave his wife whilst this 
event was still pending. At last, at the end of 
May, he gave permission for most of his Spanish 
suite and his guards to cross the Channel in advance 
of him. It was indeed time; for only a week before 
a regular pitched battle between five hundred armed 
EngHshmen and a body of Spaniards took place at 
Hampton Court, many being killed and wounded 

^ Elizabeth's Italian master was arrested in connection with 
one of these publications, called "A Dialogue." — Michaeli, 
Venetian Papers. 



HOPES AND FEARS 121 

on both sides ; ^ and the fires of Smithfield were 
blazing freely now, to the almost open anger of 
the people, who unjustly cast all the blame upon 
the Spanish influence at Court. 

There were other things, too, which made it 
expedient for Philip to hurry to his father's side. 
The Venetian ambassador went to see him at 
Richmond at the beginning of June, and on their 
way to chapel together Philip told Michaeli that 
he had that moment received news from Brussels 
that Cardinal Caraffa had been elected Pope. The 
ambassador noticed that the King was disturbed 
and unquiet at the news, as well he might be, 
for the Neapolitan, Caraffa, was the bitterest foe 
of Spain alive ; and this meant that the peace 
which was being so painfully negotiated at Calais 
would be frustrated, or in any case be of short 
duration ; for in future the Spanish champion of 
orthodoxy would have not only to contend against 
the "eldest son of the Church," but against the 
head of the Church himself,^ making common cause, 
" not only with France, but with the Turk, and 
if need be with the devil himself," to dwarf the 

^ Michaeli's advices, Venetian Calendar. 

2 Michaeli on this visit mentions that he saw Queen Mary, 
" who was looking very well ; for, placing herself every morning 
at a small window, she likes to see the procession pass, which 
at her desire, goes round the palace court, she most courteously 
bowing her head in acknowledgment to all persons who salute 
her ... as she did twice with extraordinary cheerfulness and 
graciousness to the Portuguese ambassador and myself, we 
having gone into the court to accompany the King to Mass, 
and joined the procession on the invitation of the Lords of the 
Council. Her Majesty expects and hopes during this week to 
comfort the realm by an auspicious delivery, but the greater 
part of her women think that she will go beyond." 



122 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Spanish power in Italy and the Mediterranean. But, 
urgent though Philip's presence elsewhere might 
be, it was more urgent still in England until 
safety came with the birth of his hoped for child. 
Writing in June to the Emperor, Renard says 
that everything hangs upon the happy issue of 
that event. He continues: "The doctors and ladies 
were two months out of their reckoning, and there is ~ 
now no appearance of the affair happening for another 
ten days. If, by God's mercy, she does well, 
matters here will take a better turn ; but if not, 
I foresee trouble, and a great disturbance, so great, 
indeed, that the pen cannot express it. For it is 
certain that they have managed so ill with regard 
to the succession, that if anything untoward happens 
Lady Elizabeth will have the preference, heresy 
will take a new life and religion be overturned. 
She being French in her leanings, the nation will 
decline, the ecclesiastics will be persecuted, and 
revenge will be more rife than ever. I am not 
at all sure that the King and Court will be safe 
from the people, and the final tragedy will be cala- 
mitous. It is incredible to what extent this delay 
in the birth affords to the partisans of Elizabeth 
ground for the spread of false rumours. Some say 
the Queen is not pregnant at all, and that if a 
fitting child had been found there would not have 
been so much delay." ^ 

In this critical condition affairs remained for 
many weeks longer, the Queen obstinately refusing 
to give up her hope, which her women and phy- 
sicians had already pronounced delusive. Hampton 

^ Renard to the Emperor, 27th June, 1555. — Papiers d'Etat 
de Granvelle. 



MARY'S DISAPPOINTMENT 123 

Court was overcrowded by gossiping courtiers ; 
but none were allowed to see the Queen except a 
few of her favourite ladies, and the whole of the 
routine work of the Sovereign was done by Philip. 
All this was, of course, known by the expectant 
people in London, who saw daily church processions 
for the Queen's safe delivery month after month, 
until anxiety began to give place to ridicule. 
Sometimes rumours ran that the Queen was dead, 
and that the fact was being kept secret by Philip 
in order that he mio-ht work his will in Engfland. 
Religious feeling grew more bitter than ever, with 
Bonner's ruthless persecution on the one hand and 
fanatic sacriles^e on the other. To make matters 
worse, the summer was the most inclement and 
the harvest the scantiest that had been seen in 
England for years, and discontent was everywhere. 
At length, after another disappointment in July, 
even poor, forlorn Mary herself was convinced that 
she had been mistaken, and early in August she 
dismissed the crowds of hangers-on from their 
attendance at Court and moved with a smaller 
following to Oatlands, where she gradually resumed 
her ordinary routine again. ^ 

Orders were given for the processions and roga- 
tions of the Church to be discontinued, and Philip 
was now faced with the fact that the splendid plot 
of his father to capture the control of England by 
marriage had practically failed, for Mary's health 
was evidently bad, and her life promised to be a 
short one. With it would end the hold of Philip 
over England unless the Queen's successor could be 
lured into the Spanish net. Little knew the Spaniards 
^ Michaeli, Venetian Calendar. 



124 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

yet what a wily bird it was that they hoped to snare. 
But in the meanwhile it behoved Philip to make 
the most of his opportunities whilst his wife lived. 
He could delay his departure no longer, for his 
father was peremptory now, and the urgent need 
for his presence in England had passed. He was 
as imperturbable as ever, still an attentive and 
apparently an affectionate husband to the Queen, 
though his gallantries to other ladies began to be 
talked about somewhat openly. If the Queen were 
of a jealous disposition, wrote the Venetian am- 
bassador, she would indeed be unhappy ; to which 
the reply may be made that she was jealous and 
she was unhappy. Even now, on the very eve of 
Philip's departure, she strove ardently to keep him 
by her side, or at least to extract a pledge from 
him that he would return to her within a month, 
a promise which at last he gave, though to his own 
Spanish confidants he said that if once he set foot, 
in Spain again, he would never leave it on so poor 
an occasion.^ 

By the 20th August it became impossible to hide 
any longer Philip's approximate departure. Every 
day fresh parties of Spanish courtiers and atten- 
dants were starting on the road from Gravesend to 
Dover, and the rumour spread in London that, in 
order to get away quietly, and so escape the notice 
of the French, the King intended to go down the 
river in Lord Arundel's barge and embark at Dover 
secretly. The news was untrue, for Philip and 
Mary went openly through London to Greenwich 
to make preparations for the voyage ; though it 
was jealously noted by the people that, although 
' Ambassades de Noailles, vol. v. 136. 



PHILIP'S DEPARTURE 125 

Elizabeth was now at Court and on good terms 
with the Queen, she was sent to Greenwich by 
water, it was said in order that the people might 
not see and cheer her.^ Mary was full of grief 
and inconsolable at losing her husband even for 
a month, and Philip, ostensibly full of solicitude, 
specially confided the care of her to Pole. Orders 
were given that the minutes of all the Privy Council 
meetings, translated into Latin, were to be sent to 
the King during his absence, and that no impor- 
tant resolution was to be adopted without his 
approval. Gardiner was already dying of jaundice 
and dropsy, and in no case would have been trusted 
by Philip ; but Pole was wise and amiable, and it 
was hoped would prove a pliable instrument for 
Spanish ends, advocated as they would be by the 
Councillors already bribed in the Emperor's interest. 
On the 26th August Philip and his wife left 
Hampton Court by water for Westminster, where 
they dined ; and in the afternoon, with great and 
unaccustomed state, rode through London to Green- 
wich Palace. It had been generally believed at 
one time, and the fear still lingered, that Mary 
was really dead, and it was thought necessary on 
this occasion that all London should have an 
opportunity of seeing her. At the head of the 
cavalcade rode Philip with the Cardinal on his left 
hand, followed closely by the Queen in an open 
litter. But the French ambassador, who saw the 
procession, sneered at the distrust shown by Philip 
of the Londoners, for around him there were a 
hundred of his archers of the guard, armed to the 
teeth, with their morrions on their heads and their 
' Ambassades de Noailles, vol. v. 98. 



126 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

lances raised. ^ The joy of the people at seeing 
the Queen again was great, for she was still popular 
personally, though murmurs there were for the 
absence of Elizabeth. Three days afterwards, on 
the 29th August, 1555, Philip tore himself away 
from his reluctant spouse. Mastering her grief in 
public by a great effort, but with tear-reddened 
eyes and drawn, pallid face, the Queen led her 
husband composedly through the long suites of 
rooms of the Palace of Greenwich ; though when 
the members of Philip's Spanish household who 
remained behind came one by one, and, kneeling, 
kissed his hand, Mary for a time failed to control 
her agitation : and she sobbed convulsively when 
the English ladies of the Court, copiously weeping, 
were kissed farewell in English fashion by the 
gallant young king. With a last embrace Mary's 
husband left her to enter the barge, whilst she 
retired to her own apartment, where, leaning upon 
the sill of an open window, and thinking herself 
unobserved, she gave way to her sorrow uncon- 
strained, whilst she watched the boat speed down 
the river, bearing away all she loved on earth. 

Philip played his part admirably to the last. Stand- 
ing on the most conspicuous spot of the barge, he 
continued to raise his hat and waft affectionate saluta- 
tions to the royal watcher at the window, until a bend 
in the river shut from his sight the Palace of Greenwich 
and its mistress. The bitterest disappointment must 
have been his. France was as far from being subdued 
as ever, the Emperor was weary of the struggle, old 
and sick at heart, and yearning to cast his burden upon 
his son. Peace was absolutely necessary at almost 
' Ambassades de Noailles. 



PHILIP'S FAREWELL 127 

any terms that the French would grant, for it was 
now clear that England would not, even if she were able, 
throw her resources into another's war at the bidding 
of the King Consort. But Philip showed no sign 
of defeat. Like a courteous high-bred gentleman, 
smiling and debonair, he bade a fond farewell for a 
month to his faded wife, whom, if he could have hi^_ 
way, he wished never more to see.^ 

^ Michaeli to the Doge, 3rd September, 1555. — Venetian 
Calendar. 



CHAPTER IV 



1555-1558 



Religious persecution in England — Philip's attempts to restrain 
it — His efforts to keep control of English policy — Elizabeth comes to 
Court — Return of Philip to England — French intrigues — The English 
drawn into the war — St. Quentin — Loss of Calais — Penury of the 
English treasury — Illness and death of Mary — Feria's approaches to 
Elizabeth 



RENARD had been right in his prediction. 
The moment that the restraining presence of 
Philip was removed from England the eccle- 
siastics carried things with a higher hand than ever.^ 
Not only did the fires to burn heretics increase in 
number, but proposals were made in the Council to 
resume possession for the Church of the alienated first- 
fruits and tithes, as well as the benefices in lay hands. 
The minutes of the discussion were sent to Philip 

^ It must be recollected that Philip's tolerance and modera- 
tion with regard to the extreme persecution of heresy in 
England was purely a matter of policy, as his after life clearly 
proved. At a later period, moreover, he actually claimed for 
himself the credit of the religious persecution. Cabrera de 
Cordoba quotes a letter from him to his sister Juana, in which 
he says, " I, having diverted the realm [England] from the 
sects and brought it into obedience to the Church, and having 
always been in favour of the punishment of the heretics, which 
is now being carried out so smoothly in England " (Cabrera, 

" Vida de Felipe II."). 

128 



PHILIP'S ENGLISH POLICY 129 

in Flanders with the report of the publication of the 
Bull confirming the possession by private people of 
the confiscated monastery and Church lands. To the 
latter Philip gives his readiest acquiescence ; but for 
the proposal to restore the dues to the possession of 
the Church he has nothing but doubt and evasion. 
The question, he says, should be maturely discussed 
by eight selected Councillors, who should report to 
him before anything decisive is done, and he warns 
them that in the forthcoming Parliament nothing must 
be proposed without his prior consent. So, also, in 
the matter of the English Navy. The Council reported 
to him that the ships were mostly unseaworthy and 
should be brought into the Thames for repair, whilst 
the few good vessels should be reinforced and stationed 
between Dover and Calais. There was nothingf that 
Philip needed more than that the French should be 
held in check in the Channel, and he is emphatic in 
his endorsement of the Council's suggestion. " Eng- 
land's chief defence depends upon its Navy being 
always ready to defend the realm against invasion, 
so that it is right that the ships should not only be 
fit for sea but instantly available. , . . The vessels 
ought to be stationed at Portsmouth, where they can 
much more easily be brought into service." That 
Philip had his own interests in mind quite as 
much as those of England in the matter is seen by 
what follows. " The King is the more inclined to this 
course, as the Emperor has decided to sail for Spain 
about the end of October . . . and has expressed 
a wish that twelve or fourteen English ships should 
escort him beyond Ushant. This makes the King 
more anxious that these ships should be ready and in 
excellent order ; so that, besides other necessary uses, 



I30 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

they may go upon this service, which will be especially 
grateful to his Highness." ^ 

Mary, it will be seen, counted for nothing. The 
sole object in view was Philip's interests, and, although 
decently cloaked with his usual bland professions of 
his desire to serve England, everything he did at this 
time was directed to using the country for his ends 
whilst his wife lived. After that he would have to deal 
with a new state of affairs. Another instance of the 
postponement of English interests for his benefit is 
seen in the delay in summoning Parliament until after 
he had left England. The sole object of the session 
was to raise money. Mary's Government was in the 
deepest penury. Extravagance, corruption, and de- 
moralisation existed everywhere in the administration ; 
but pressing as was the need for funds, Philip could 
not face the certain unpopularity that would have 
fallen upon him if the demand for large taxation before 
his departure had given a pretext to the suspicious 
English for the belief that the money was being raised 
Jfpr him. 

In great state Mary, with Pole by her side, pro- 
ceeded from St. James's Palace in a sort of throne- 
litter on the 2ist October, 1555, to open Parliament 
at Westminster, and Gardiner as Lord Chancellor, 
now a dying man, appealed in the Queen's name for 
liberal supplies to conduct the business of the nation. 
It was his last effort, and though Parliament voted a 
million crowns, to be paid in two years, the Chancellor 
took no further share in public business, dying three 
weeks after at Whitehall, whither he was carried from 
the Parliament Chamber. The death of Gardiner 
was an irreparable loss to Mary. The man had many 
? State Papers, Domestic, September, 1555. 



GARDINER AND POLE 131 

faults ; he was arrogant, unscrupulous, and violent, 
but he was a bold and experienced statesman, who 
kept his shifty, greedy colleagues in something 
approaching subjection ; and he was determined to 
prevent, if he could, either of the great Continental 
rivals from obtaining control of English policy for 
their ends. He had opposed the Spanish match as 
long as opposition might have prevented it ; but when 
it was effected he minimised its disadvantages and 
never allowed either the Queen or Philip to subordi- 
nate English interests to those of others. He was as 
unpopular with the French faction as he was with the 
Spanish, and his death left the greedy cliques of 
Councillors, of whom Paget was the most active and 
corrupt, most of them bribed by one or both rivals, to 
wrangle uncontrolled in the interests of their pay- 
masters or their own, with little thought for England. 
Pole had lost touch of English politics, for he was, to 
all intents and purposes, an Italian ecclesiastic, with a 
first thought for his papal mission. He lived in the 
Palace during Philip's absence, and every day solemnly 
prayed with Mary for the King's safe return ; but he 
had refused to act as leading political Councillor, and 
was only consulted, as the Queen was, on subjects of 
high importance or upon which the Councillors differed. 
He, like the Queen, undoubtedly meant well by Eng- 
land ; but, like her also, his views were exalted and 
unpractical, and thenceforward there was little restrain- 
ing power upon the Council, except such as could be 
exerted by Philip, far away in Flanders and over- 
whelmed with his own affairs. 

Philip had found his father in the last stage of 
mental and physical depression, and soon after the 
son arrived from England, on the 25th October, 1555, 



132 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Charles V., in one of the most dramatic scenes in 
history, surrendered to him the sovereignty of the 
land of his birth, his beloved Flanders. This was soon 
followed by the abandonment of the rest of his crowns ; 
and Philip, in January, 1556, found himself monarch 
of all the vast inheritance of Burgundy and Spain, 
whilst his uncle Ferdinand took the exalted but power- 
less crown of the Empire. Almost simultaneously 
with Philip's accession to the Spanish Crown the 
Emperor, desirous above all things of leaving his 
son at peace, brought the long-drawn peace negotia- 
tions to an end by signing a five years' truce at 
Vaucelles with his rival, France. England was thus 
for a short time relieved from the dread of being 
drawn into the war to please the King Consort. 
^' In the meanwhile, Mary had been fretting and 
pining for her absent husband. He had promised 
her faithfully to return in a month, but that, of course, 
was out of the question. Stories came to her, 
also, that he was enjoying himself there with ladies 
younger than herself, not wisely but too well for the 
faithful spouse of so saintly a wife. " This has so 
much upset her that in conversation with one of her 
most intimate friends she said that if it should so 
happen that the King never came back, notwith- 
standing all her efforts to recall him, she must put 
up with living the rest of her life without the com- 
pany of a man, as she had done before her marriage, 
and with such patience as she could. This gives 
food for the reflection that in order to persuade him 
to return the sooner she will make incredible efforts 
in this Parliament in his favour." ^ Philip's revenge 
for his enforced good behaviour in England, indeed, 
^ Ambassades de Noailles. 



PHILIP IN FLANDERS 133 

almost alarmed the Emperor. For the only time in 
his life the King Consort now became dissipated, 
carrying on vulgar intrigues and scouring the streets 
of Brussels in disguise in search of adventure. News 
came to Mary that he had fallen ill, though there was 
nothing the matter with him but the effects of too 
much gaiety, and a special English courier sent by 
the anxious Queen to learn the truth with regard to 
his health was received by Philip in Brussels in 
December, 1555. The King sent reassuring news 
to his wife with affectionate greetings, and a faithful 
promise to go over to England at once, and the 
English messenger, overjoyed at the good tidings 
he bore, promised the Spanish courtiers that he 
would not damp the Queen's delight by telling her 
of her husband's high jinks, "as she was so easily 
upset, and was so anxious about him that it would 
afflict her too much." For a few days after she got 
Philip's message Mary lived in a heaven of antici- 
pation, but, alas ! orders came anon that the King's 
Spanish household in England was to make ready 
to depart, and this cast her into despair, for she 
believed it portended Philip's own return to Spain. 
The English people, unlike their Queen, were rejoiced 
at the departure of the Spaniards, and as they went 
on their way to Dover followed them with reviling 
and insults, for Philip's new dignity had in no way 
increased the popularity of himself and his country- 
men in Spain, because it was feared that when the 
war broke out again with France, as it evidently 
soon would, his position as King Consort of England 
and Sovereign of Flanders would make it impossible 
for the English to keep out of the conflict. ^ 
One of Mary's baits to draw Philip back to her was 



134 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

to persuade her Council to consent to his coronation in 
England. From the first both Philip and his father 
had laid great stress upon this, but the successive 
English Parliaments, and even the English Council, 
had vetoed it. Nq,w , that the strongest man who 
opposed it was dead, Philip urged his wife to press 
the proposal again, certain that she would do so, if 
possible, in order to bring him to London, if for no 
other reason ; but Mary had to face for the first 
time a Parliament of some spirit and independence, 
consisting largely of gentry, and she wrote to her 
husband saying that she did not dare to propose 
his coronation yet, as so many disaffected members 
had been returned. Noailles was busy inciting 
opposition in Parliament, and he noted with glee 
that now that the King had gone people spoke 
more freely about him than ever. Another demand 
was repeated by Philip to his wife, namely, that 
she should join him in the war with France.^ Mary, 
through an envoy of Cardinal Pole, was obliged to 
tell her husband that she was surrounded by people 
whom she could not trust, that the nation was already 
unquiet, if not disaffected, and that any attempt to 
draw England into the war at present might cost 
her her crown. But she ended with another 
earnest prayer that he would return to her, and all 
might then be well. Once more Philip promised to 
come immediately, and the English fleet was made 
ready to receive him at Calais ; but the truce of Vau- 
celles, already mentioned, for the next few months 
made Philip's need less pressing, and he came not. 
'I Gradually the centre of interest in English politics 

^ This, of course, was late in 1555, before the truce of 
Vaucelles in February, 1556. 



THE RISE OF ELIZABETH 135 

was changing from Mary to her sister Elizabeth. 
Notwithstanding the Queen's continued assertion of 
hope that she yet might become a mother if Philip 
would return to England again, every one but the 
deluded lady herself had now abandoned such a hope. 
By the will of Henry VIII., which Mary did not 
dare to alter, Elizabeth was the next heir. The 
Princess was idolised by the people, and although 
she was to all appearance a devout Catholic, the 
Reform party and the friends of France looked 
towards her as their leader. Paget was more than 
suspected of intriguing in her favour, for he was now 
receiving French pay; her kinsman. Lord William 
Howard, treated her, to Mary's anger, almost as a 
queen already ; and other Councillors, uncertain of the 
future, were unblushingly hedging in her favour. 
When Philip left England he specially commended 
the Princess to the kindness of the Queen ; and ac- 
cording to Noailles, his chamberlain in England, Don 
Diego de Geneda, with the other Spanish courtiers, 
paid marked attention to her, visiting her in her 
apartments at Greenwich during her stay there every 
day. Geneda appears, indeed, to have secretly offered 
to Elizabeth Philip's ten-year-old son as a husband, 
but the Princess again took refuge behind her im- 
penetrable reserve. She was determined, she said, 
neither to marry nor to leave the country.^ 

The Spanish attempts to win Elizabeth were 
watched closely by Noailles, as were the suspected 
intentions of the Queen in her disfavour whilst 
Parliament was sitting. Mary, as we have seen, 

^ Michaeli to the Doge, Venetian Calendar, 28th April, 1556. 
She had been asked many times to go to Flanders to stay with 
Philip's aunt, Mary of Hungary. 



136 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

however, found the newly elected Commons so stout 
and outspoken that she was afraid to advance any of 
her dearly cherished designs to them, and hastened 
to dissolve them in December, clapping some of the 
bolder members into prison for speaking too freely. 
The group of English exiles still in France were 
continuing to demand fresh help to aid their dis- 
affected brothers in England, and in the circum- 
stances it is not surprising that Noailles and his 
master should consider the juncture a favourable 
one for making a clean sweep of Mary and the 
Spanish interest in England. Courtenay, in Italy, 
was secretly warned to hold himself in readiness, 
but this was only a matter of precaution, for poor 
Courtenay was in the hands of the enemy and already 
a dead force. The principal card by which Noailles 
hoped to win the game for France was Elizabeth, 
now living quietly and devoutly at Hatfield, sur- 
rounded by servants upon whom she could depend. 
Through a French agent named Bertheville Noailles 
approached a number of disaffected gentlemen, several 
of them members of the late Parliament, from Devon- 
shire ; and Sir Henry Dudley, Sir Anthony Kingston, 
Sir William Peckham, Ashton, Daniel, the two Tre- 
maynes, and others, agreed to proclaim Elizabeth, 
expel or otherwise dispose of Mary, marry the new 
Queen to Courtenay, and free the country finally from 
the Spanish nightmare. The aid of France was, of 
course, a necessary condition of success ; but when 
the moment for action came Henry II. had just 
signed the truce of Vaucelles, and he counselled 
prudence and a waiting policy, knowing that the 
blow might be more effectually dealt when the in- 
evitable war recommenced. That Elizabeth was at 



FRENCH INTRIGUES 137 

least cognisant that something was afoot is evident 
from Montmorenci's letter to Noailles of 7th February, 
1556 (Ambassades, vol. v.), in which he says : "And, 
above all, prevent Madam Elizabeth from moving 
in the slightest degree to undertake what you say; 
for if she do it will spoil everything and prevent the 
fruition of their designs, which must be deferred until 
a good opportunity offers." 

The French Embassy in London became the 
rallying-point for treason against Mary ; crowds of 
disaffected Englishmen begged for means of joining 
Dudley, who had gone to France, and there with 
French aid to organise a descent upon England 
simultaneous with a rising at Court. Noailles him- 
self was an eager conspirator, but the French 
Government advised delay, and the ambassador was , / 
obliged to temporise.^^^The' conspirators were in no'^U- 
mood now for half-measures, for the country was ■/■^^^^ 
growing indignant at the religious persecutions and 
the unfounded belief that Mary was impoverishing 
her country by sending out money to her Spanish 
husband, and it was determined by the conspirators 
to act at once. Sir Anthony Kingston, with the 
Devonshire men, was to march to London, raising 
the country on the way ; the Captain of the Isle of 
Wight, Uvedale, was to place the island at the dis- 
posal of the English refugees from France, whilst 
Heneage and other courtiers undertook to raise 
London, pillage the treasury, and proclaim Elizabeth 
Queen. Pole always distrusted Elizabeth, even in 
her most submissive and Catholic moods ; and, thanks 
to a spy, he had already been informed of the whole 
plan of the conspirators ; whilst Wotton, the English 
ambassador in France, had kept the English Council 



138 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

well informed of the movements and gossip of the 
English refugees. Just before the time fixed for the 
rising, therefore, the hand of the Council came down 
heavily upon the conspirators, and by the end of 
March all the principals found themselves behind 
the bars, most of them on the way to the scaffold. 

There was no direct evidence of Elizabeth's guilt — 
she had taken good care of that ; but Mary and Philip 
were well aware that she was the person to supplant 
them, and they determined, if possible, to remove 
her from future temptation. The idea at first was to 
send her to Flanders or Spain, with or without her 
consent ; and this probably would have been done 
but for the efforts of Pole's secretary, the Abb6 of St. 
Salut, a Piedmontese, who had been gained over to 
the French side, and convinced the Cardinal of the 
danger to England of thus handing the heiress to the 
Crown to the keeping of Spaniards. As an alterna- 
tive Mary determined to search Hatfield House, 
arrest her sister's confidential servants, and place 
the Princess herself under arrest. Protestant books 
and seditious publications against the King and 
Queen were discovered in a hiding-place, and some 
of her household, when pressed in the Tower, gave 
evidence seriously implicating Elizabeth herself. 
Again her fate trembled in the balance. To carry 
her to the Tower or to deal with her as a rebel 
might precipitate a rising in London, where she 
was greatly beloved ; to send her to Spain might 
be to perpetuate the hold of Philip upon the country, 
and not even Pole wished for that. So in her 
perplexity, whilst guarding Elizabeth straitly, Mary 
begged her absent husband's direction. 

Philip's need for England's co-operation was 



FRENCH INTRIGUES 139 

greater than ever, for he was faced with a new 
formidable coalition of France, the Pope, and the 
Turk against him, sworn to crush him finally ; 
and he knew that his wife was failing. To drive 
Elizabeth into the hands of the French now would 
be impolitic, and for him policy was everything. So 
Mary was enjoined to treat her sister gently, to 
release her from arrest, and to assure her of future 
favour. Two members of the Council went to 
Hatfield with the Queen's message. Her Majesty did 
not believe the allegations against her sister, they 
said, and so long as the latter was obedient and 
loyal she would find that, very far from being dis- 
trusted, she would be beloved and esteemed ; and 
this kind message was sealed by the gift of a 
costly ring. But blandishments had no more 
influence over Elizabeth than threats. She had 
begun to realise her power and importance, and 
declined to play the game of Spain by going to 
Court and allowing herself to be cajoled into a 
marriage to suit her brother-in-law. 

In the meanwhile the English refugees in France, 
led by Sir Henry Dudley, were more active than 
ever, and the reports of the spies with regard to 
the intention of Henry II. kept Mary in a state 
of constant alarm, ^ for invasion was threatened at 
a dozen distinct points on the English coast, and 
her navy was in a deplorable condition. Some 
check was afforded to the intrigues by the prema- 
ture death of Courtenay in September, but this 
rendered more necessary than ever assurance of 

^ The process of these conspiracies may be foUowed step by 
step in the Letters of Noailles (Ambassades), Michaeh (Venetian 
Calendar), and Wotton (Foreign Calendar). 



140 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Elizabeth to the Spanish party. In response to a 
peremptory command Elizabeth was fain at last, 
in November, 1556, to travel from Hatfield to 
London. Attended by two hundred horsemen in 
her livery, her ride through the capital to her 
Palace of Somerset House was like a triumphal 
progress. Cheers and blessings resounded on all 
sides, for she knew well how to draw the affec- 
tionate greeting of the common people : but what 
was more surprising was that the courtiers and 
Councillors, even Cardinal Pole, who had previously 
refused even to see her, hastened to salute her, and on 
her appearance at her sister's Court no honour was 
considered sufficient for her.^ What could it mean, 
asked her French friends, this sudden favour ? and 
perhaps the Princess herself was puzzled at first. She 
had not, however, many days to wait. Philip had 
written to Mary and the Council directing them to 
press urgently the suit of Emmanuel Philibert of 
Savoy for Elizabeth's hand, and Mary left no effort 
untried to carry out her husband's wishes.^ Letter 
after letter came from the King in Flanders express- 
ing his profound interest in the result, for the new 
Pope had united the enemies of Spain, Henry II. 
had broken the truce of Vaucelles, and, beset on all 
hands, Philip saw that unless he could depend upon 

' Michaeli, Venetian Calendar. 

= In a pathetic and submissive letter (Cotton, Titus B. 2, 
57, British Museum) Mary beseeches Philip to allow her to 
defer the matter until he comes to England. Her doubts on the 
matter seem to have been partly inspired by jealousy of her 
sister, who if she married Emmanuel Philibert in Flanders 
would be near PhiHp, for she adds : " If you will not defer it I 
shall be jealous of your Highness, which would be worse for 
me than death — I have already begun to feel uneasy." 



MARY AND ELIZABETH 141 

England even after his wife's death, his cause could 
never prevail. But Elizabeth was as adamant. To 
all the arguments and desires of her sister she 
would only give one reply : she was determined 
not to marry. 

In vain Mary, losing all patience, stormed and 
threatened. She would deprive her of the succession 
in favour of Mary of Scotland, she would have her 
proclaimed a bastard, she would send her to the 
Tower as a traitor, and much else of the same sort, 
said the angry Queen ; and Elizabeth, alarmed at 
the violence, fell ill. She thought, too, of seeking 
safety by flight to France, though from this she was 
dissuaded by Noailles. But, ill and frightened though 
she was, she never wavered for a moment in her 
refusal to marry Emmanuel Philibert at the bidding 
of her brother-in-law ; and after only five days' stay in 
London she stolidly went in disgrace again under 
guard to Hatfield.^ 

The intemperate violence of the Neapolitan Pope 
Paul IV. (Caraffa) against Philip and the Spaniards, 
and the war which the Pontiff had precipitated, made 
it more difficult than ever for Philip to persuade 
the English to join him in the fight : for to war 
against the Papacy seemed to Mary impious, and 
Pole, now in the place of the martyred Cranmer, 
Archbishop of Canterbury as well as Papal Legate, 
strongly discountenanced any such an attitude on 
the part of a country only just reconciled to the 
Holy See. The Lord Chancellor, Heath, Archbishop 
of York, and a devout Catholic, was shocked at the 
idea of entering into a war, and above all a war 
without any provocation, against the apostolic power ; 
^ Noailles and Michaeli. 



142 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

and Philip found now that not only were the common 
people in England against his adventure, but the 
principal advisers of his wife, and, for the first time, 
even his wife herself. She was willing, even eager, 
to make war upon France ; for she had her own 
grudge against a Power which harboured her rebels 
and subsidised all the plots against her ; but to go 
to war with Henry was now also to oppose Rome, 
and the main bone of contention was the Spanish 
dominion over Italy, which concerned England not 
at all. She was, moreover, in the deepest poverty, 
for, against Philip's wish, she had insisted upon 
restoring to the Church all the ecclesiastical property 
in the hands of the Government ; and the country 
itself was seething with discontent ; so that, whatever 
her own wishes were, she was perfectly powerless 
to help Philip as he wished with men, arms, and ships 
.for his purpose. 

Alba, whom Philip had sent from England to 
represent him in Italy, was no weakling, and, like 
his master, though a devout Catholic he looked upon 
the Papacy as a mere instrument for Spain's exaltation, 
and he promptly answered Paul's denunciations by 
marching in September, 1556, boldly upon Rome, 
submitting town after town in the Pope's dominions. 
In vain Paul shrieked anathemas and flung defiance 
at the hated Spaniards, and threatened with instant 
death any one who dared to speak of peace with 
them. Guise with the French army hastened to 
relieve Rome from imminent capture ; and in the 
hope of delaying matters until he could arrive, the 
Pope entered into negotiations with Alba for a forty 
days' truce, leaving the Spaniards in possession of 
most of the papal fortresses. Guise and his army 



PHILIP COMES AGAIN 143 

soon altered the aspect of affairs, and through the 
summer of 1557 Alba and Guise fought out the 
quarrel of Spain and France upon Italian papal soil, 
whilst on the frontiers of Flanders Emmanuel Philibert 
was at close grips with Henry II. himself. 

Now, if ever, was the time when the En<^' 
connection might help Philip, but it was 
that unless he could exert his personal inliuence 
upon Mary and her Councillors he could not hot: 
to obtain it. So, at length, in Feb, L.ary, 1557, Philip, 
sorely pressed though he wp-:, announced to Mary 
his intention of visiting ' again. The Queen's 
joy at the news was '-cttnetic in its intensity vhough 
Pole warned hernoi > ; build too much upon a promise 
that had been broken so often before. She had 
been ill ard disconsolate .ope deferred, but 

the news of Philip's coming gave her new life, and 
she .hurried to London from Hampton Court, visiting 
" 'ole Sit Lambeth on the way, exerting all her influence 
to win h'lw to her side. Thenceforward for some 
weeksj whilst the King's voyage was pending, the 
English Council sat nearly night and day, and 
iiiriers hastened backwards and forwards between 
I -xdon, Brussels, and Paris. The English refugees 
xn France had treacherously given to Henry II. 
much information about the weakness and disaffection 
in the English fortresses of Calais and Guisnes ; 
and at the first news of Philip's fresh visit to England 
the French forces around Calais were increased, for it 
was evident now that Mary would be dragged into 
the war, and her most vulnerable point of attack 
was Calais. 

Philip landed at Dover on the i8th March, 1557, 
and took horse with all speed to Gravesend. At 



144 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Canterbury he alighted to attend service at the 
cathedral ; but so hurriedly that he did not wait 
to take off his spurs. This being against the rule, 
a young student was bold enough to claim the forfeit, 
or fine : and the King smilingly emptied his purse 
of gold in the youth's cap before he rode on his 
way. Again his habitual haughty frigidity was 
changed fc' be genial bonhomie that he found 
suited his purpose best in England. At every 
stage messengers from the Queen met him, one of 
whom galloped back to her immediately with news 
of his progress, and on his arrival at Greenwich 
poor forlorn Mary hailed him with love unutterable. 
For two days h-^- remained with her alone, draining, 
as he formerly said, the chalice of his sacrifice to 
the dregs ; and then they passed through London 
together once more, she bonie in a litter, he riding by 
her side. His reception was not unfriendly by the 
people, whom he tried to gain by his affability and 
moderation, though the fear that wai 'Vi, ; ' be the 
result of his visit made them uneasy, be far as the 
Councillors were concerned, they were now but f'=eble. 
folk to stand against him and the Queen ; though 
Pole, the Pope's legate, did not even officially greet 
one who was in arms against the Papacy, and the 
Cardinal departed as quickly as might be to his 
diocese, so as to be out of the way whilst PhiHp 
was at Court. 

But still, bribed though the Council was and how- 
ever submissive the Queen, the state of feeling in 
England was such as to make a declaration of war 
against France a dangerous matter. A series of 
bad harvests, the depreciation of the coinage, and 
the enclosure of the commons and parks had reduced 



ENGLAND AND THE WAR 145 

the country to a condition of the utmost misery. 
Money was extremely scarce, and the idea of squand- 
ering large sums upon a foreign war drove the 
distracted Council to despair, though Philip in the 
course of many conferences with them urged it 
incessantly. The Councillors admitted that, in ac- 
cordance with the old treaty of 1543 between the 
Emperor and Henry VHI.,^ England might be called 
upon to provide an armed contingent if Flanders 
were attacked by France : but Philip wanted more 
than that, and to some extent he was successful, 
notwithstanding that Archbishop Heath tearfully 
protested that the country was quite unable to meet 
the necessary expenditure. It was at last arranged 
that eight thousand English infantry should be raised 
for service and one thousand cavalry, three thousand 
of the former to reinforce the English fortresses in 
France, and the rest to be at Philip's service for 
four months, under the command of Lord Pembroke, 
Sir Thomas Cheyne, Lord Bedford, and Lord Grey 
de Wilton, one-half the cost only to be borne by 
England. But there was also a promise on the 
part of the Council to fit out and man with six 
thousand soldiers the English fleet to hold the 
Channel against the French. Upon one point the 
Council was firm : these forces were simple auxiliaries 
contributed in accordance with the old treaty, and 
must not entail a national war between England 
and France. 

But this arrangement did not suit France better 
than it did her enemy. If England was to join Philip 

^ The particulars of this treaty will be found in the author's 
Calendar of Spanish State Papers, Henry VIII., vols, vi., vii., 
and viii. 

L 



146 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

in the war, she must be open to counter attack and 
reprisals. But if England could strike indirectly so 
could France, and by such means a national rupture 
might be precipitated which would allow of a French 
invasion over the Scottish border and the siege of the 
English fortresses in France. So again the English 
Protestant exiles in France were feasted and made much 
of by Henry II. They were a turbulent lot of young 
gallants whose brawls and adventures had scandalised 
the French Court : but now they suddenly assumed 
a new importance. Thomas Stafford, the nephew 
of Cardinal Pole, a cadet of his family with no valid 
claims whatever, was the most hairbrained of the 
crew, and took it into his head to pose as the rightful 
pretender to the English Crown. Henry could not 
openly countenance such a pretension, but Stafford 
was allowed to recruit men for his attempt. French- 
men, Scots, and discontented English, a motley 
rabble of lawless adventurers, flocked to his standard 
at Rouen, in ignorance of their exact destination. 
Sailing in two well-armed ships from Dieppe, he 
suddenly descended upon Scarborough. Affairs were 
in so critical a condition in England that anything 
might have happened, and Wotton, the English 
ambassador in France, believed that if Thomas 
Stafford once secured a footing in England he might 
draw to him all the discontented element, to Mary's 
undoing. Stafford, however, was not of the stuff 
from which successful pretenders are made. He 
seized Scarborough Castle in April, whilst Philip 
was still in England, and at once announced that 
he came to claim the Crown and deliver the country 
from the yoke of the Spaniards, who intended to 
rule it by force. But in a day or two the Catholic 



ENGLAND FORCED INTO WAR 147 

Earl of Westmorland with his militia took him by sur- 
prise and Thomas Stafford's bubble burst before it was 
well inflated, greatly to Noailles' scorn and annoyance. 
The retribution for treason came swiftly, and before a 
month was out the heads of the principal rebels 
had fallen on the block on Tower Hill. But a gust 
of indignation passed over England at the attempt, 
prompted as it had been by the French, and suddenly 
the idea of war with France, the enemy of the Queen, 
became popular. Henry H. did his best to explain 
away his complicity ; ^ but Mary, transported with 
rage, dismissed Noailles, and Philip was delighted 
to find that England was now ready to join him 
nationally in a war against France. 

On the 6th June heralds in London proclaimed 
hostilities, and Philip for the first time, even at this 
eleventh hour, saw some return for the sacrifice he 
had made in marrying the Queen of England. He 
hated war, and his methods were essentially peaceful 
and diplomatic ; but he knew that his best chance of 
securing a durable peace was to exert his utmost power 
whilst his control of English resources lasted, which 
it was evident could not be very long, for the Queen's 
declining health was plain now to every one but her- 
self, though she clung still tenaciously to her pathetic 
dream of happy maternity. Satisfied with the results 
of his mission, Philip rode on the ist July, 1557* 
from Gravesend through Canterbury to Dover. 
Mary would not leave him whilst he remained on 
English soil, and, weak and ailing but happy with her 
new fallacious hope, she was carried in a litter by 
her husband's side to the coast. On the 3rd July she 

^ Sorzano to the Doge, May, 1557, Venetian Calendar, detailing 
a conversation with Henry on the subject. 



148 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

bade him a last farewell, as he stepped upon the 
barge that was to carry him to the waiting galleon, 
and then, with sorrow and satisfaction mingled, she 
turned her back upon the sea and was carried to 
Jier desolate palace at Greenwich. 
" The gentry of England, at all events, were ready to 
welcome the war with France that gave them the 
taste of warlike adventure which they loved, and the 
contingent to fight in Flanders was soon made ready, 
whilst the Lord Admiral with his fleet of twenty-three 
ships held the Channel. Philip's General-in-Chief 
was his young cousin Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, 
who had an army of fifty thousand men under him 
ready for the autumn campaign ; whilst the French 
on the Flemish frontier, under Constable Montmorenci, 
numbered less than half that strength, for the flower 
of the French troops were under Guise in Italy, with 
difficulty defending the Pope from the great Duke of 
Alba, and Emmanuel Philibert opened his campaign 
as soon as the English arrived. By a series of rapid 
and unexpected movements, which entirely misled the 
French, he suddenly concentrated his attack upon the 
rich and important city of St. Quintin, weakly 
garrisoned and in poor condition of defence. Mont- 
morenci hurried with his main army to relieve the 
fortress, and on the loth August was cleverly out- 
flanked by Emmanuel Philibert ; caught in a trap 
between a stronger enemy and a morass, the French 
were utterly routed with a loss of half their numbers, 
Montmorenci himself being captured, and the whole 
force dispersed. Coligny with his tiny garrison in St. 
Quintin heroically held out for a fortnight longer ; but 
from the day of Montmorenci's defeat there was no 
force to prevent Philip from marching upon Paris and 



PHILIP'S VICTORY 149 

crushing his enemy for good." This was his chance, 
and he missed it, as he did every great opportunity in 
his long Hfe by that " prudent " leaden foot of his 
which always lagged when it should have hastened. 
In vain Savoy begged his permission to march on, and 
was refused, to the indignant surprise of the old 
Emperor when he heard of it in his cloister at Yuste. 

Philip had been at Cambrai on the day of the battle, 
but when he saw the awful sack and sacrilege after 
the surrender of St. Quintin he was horrified at the 
sight. Te Deums were chanted, votive offerings of 
unheard of richness were promised, ^ joy bells were rung 
in Flanders, Spain, and England for the great victory ; 
but Philip's host moved no further onward towards 
Paris. The German Schwartzreiters, mercenary troops 
in Philip's service, unpaid ruffians, held high revel in 
the ruined town, burning and ravaging unchecked. 
The Earl of Bedford, writing to Sir William Cecil 
from St. Quintin a few days after the surrender, says 
that these rascals, " being masters of the King's whole 
army, used such force as well to the Spaniards, 

^ The Earl of Bedford, writing to Cecil on the 21st August, 
says that " the Count of Egmont with two thousand Spaniards 
and Schwartzreiters and as many of us made a ride into France 
of twenty-two miles, and found no great resistance, nor should 
have done though we had gone much further." — Haynes' State 
Papers. ^ 

2 The vast monastery palace of the Escorial owed its origin ' 
to such a promise on the part of Philip II. when he saw to his 
sorrow that his troops had destroyed and sacked a church and 
cloister dedicated to St. Laurence at St. Quintin. To appease 
the saint, he promised on the spot to build the grandest 
monastery to St. Laurence in the world, and he kept his 
word. For the greater part of his life the building of this 
stupendous pile upon the sterile Guadarrama steppes was an 
obsession of the King. 



T50 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Italians, and other nations as unto us, that there were 
none could enjoy nothing but themselves. They have 
now shown such cruelty as the like hath not been seen 
for greediness. The town by them was set afire, 
and a great piece of it burnt. Divers were burnt in 
cellars, and were killed immediately ; women and 
children gave such pitiful cries that it would grieve 
any Christian heart." The Germans, discontented 
with their loot, quarrelled and deserted in thousands, 
for Philip's fatal deliberation had left them idle ; the 
English, sulky and unpaid, grumbled incessantly. 
Bedford reports that " they are pinched with scarcity 
and divers have fallen sick " ; and, again, a month 
later: "Our General is sick of ague, our pay very 
slack, and people grudge for want. I trust we shall 
speedily be discharged." The Spaniards asserted 
that the English had shown no stomach for the fight 
before St, Quintin, and certainly they did not shine 
in it. Their discontent at last became so pronounced 
that Philip, realising their uselessness, and being, as 
usual, short of money, acceded to their clamour to be 
allowed to return home at the end of the stipulated 
four months of their service. Much was made of the 
King's victory in London. Mary and Pole congratu- 
lated him upon the signal mark of God's favour. 
Bonfires, free feasts, and official rejoicings were pro- 
vided ; but London wanted to gain no victories for 
Spaniards, and refused to be glad. 

Whilst Philip's army was melting away in idleness 
Guise, realising where the danger lay, quietly aban- 
doned the Pope to the mercy of Alba, and by forced 
marches hurried to the Flemish frontier. The intem- 
perate Pontiff was then obliged to make terms with Alba, 
who entered Rome, as a pretended penitent instead of 



LOSS OF CALAIS 151 

a conqueror, and once more the two great antagonists 
were left to fight out their quarrel without papal inter- 
ference. Henry II. had long had his eye upon Eng- 
land's important foothold on France, the citadel and 
town of Calais. The English refugees had exposed 
to him the weak points in its defence, it had been 
starved and neglected both by Edward VI. and Mary ; 
and the younger Noailles on his way home when Mary 
had dismissed him, carefully scrutinised the fortress 
and reported to the King that it might easily be 
captured. Guise, on his hurried return from Italy, 
directed himself straight towards the place and be- 
leaguered it, capturing the Rysbank, the island fort 
defending the harbour, on the first days of January, 
1558. Philip had long known that Calais was weakly 
held, and in many of his letters to the Queen and 
Council he had urged that it should be effectively 
reinforced. On Guise's approach the King sent his 
favourite, the Count de Feria, hurriedly to England 
to say how desperate the condition now was with the 
Rysbank in the hands of Guise ; but the preparations 
for the voyage of so important a person as Feria took 
much time, and the Queen in London learnt of the 
disaster immediately by a letter from Lord Went- 
worth, the Governor of Calais. 

Mary, still full of her renewed hope of maternity, 
which all but herself knew was piteously fallacious, 
received the news courageously and set to work to 
reinforce the town. Pembroke was ordered to raise 
five thousand men and cross at once to Philip's harbour 
of Dunkirk, whence Calais might be reached by land. 
Unfortunately, the English town of Guisnes, near 
Calais, was in as perilous a condition as Calais itself, and 
Lord Grey de Wilton, the Commander, found himself, 



152 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

as he says, " clean cut off from all aid and relief. I have 
looked for both out of England and Calais, and know 
not how to have help by any means, either of men or 
victuals. There resteth now none other way for the 
succour of Calais, but a power of men out of England 
or from the King's Majesty or both.''^ Alas! the 
King's Majesty himself had now few fit troops to 
meet Guise's veterans. His demoralised army, 
scattered wide in winter quarters through Flanders, 
were difficult to collect rapidly, and Lords Wentworth 
and Grey de Wilton in vain sent daily beseeching 
letters to Philip to come to their aid, as Guise pressed 
Calais and Guisnes more closely. Calais particularly 
was crowded with traitors and enemies of the Spaniard, 
anxious to deliver the place to the French ; and, 
although the English troops repulsed one attempt to 
storm the town on the 6th January, it cheerfully sur- 
rendered to the besiegers two days later ; and Guisnes 
fell with but little more resistance directly afterwards. 2 
The news fell like an aerolite upon the English 
Queen and nation. The possession of Calais had been 
regarded for centuries as the keystone to England's 
commercial prosperity and political importance in 
Europe, and the surrender of the last foothold in 
France seemed a loss irreparable. That it should 
have been lost in a war undertaken on behalf of the 
Queen's Spanish Consort, whilst he with a great 
though scattered force was in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood, added bitterness to the humiliation ; and 
the Count de Feria, foreseeing the storm of anger 
that in England would greet the news, tarried a day 

^ Lord Grey de Wilton to the Queen. — Domestic Calendar. 
2 An interesting account of the defence and loss of Guisnes is 
given by Lord Grey himself (Camden Society). 



GRIEF FOR THE LOSS OF CALAIS 153 

or two in Dunkirk rather than cross the Channel with 
the sinister tidings. His first mission had been to 
induce the English Council to send forces to defend 
Calais and Guisnes, but he knew full well that behind 
this demand there was the need for English forces 
again to aid his master in the coming campaign ; so, 
interpreting his instructions freely, he determined to 
proceed on his journey and turn his request into one 
for troops to recover the fortresses with the King's 
help. 

Feria arrived in London on the 26th January, 1558, 
and to his surprise he found the people and the Queen 
quite changed in temper since he had left them with 
the King six months before. There was no despon- 
dency anywhere now ; for though the blow had been a 
shrewd one it had aroused the spirit of the nation. 
The Queen was like a lioness ; for she was fighting 
now, as she thought, poor soul, for the inheritance of 
her unborn offspring ; and she threatened to have the 
head of any Councillor of hers who dared to talk of 
peace with France until she had recovered the towns 
her ancestors had held for centuries. She would win 
them again, she said ; her son would be born, and she 
and Philip, triumphant and at peace, would live 
happily. It was a dream, but it was shared, so far as 
concerned the recovery of the English territory in 
France, by the nation at large, which was now on its 
mettle ; and clergy, gentry, and merchants opened 
their coffers, melted their gold chains, and mortgaged 
their belongings to provide funds for avenging English 
honour and protecting the English soil against the 
foreigner. 

The moment the news of the peril of Calais had 
reached Mary she despatched the Earl of Sussex and 



154 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

her Controller, Sir R. Rochester, to assure Philip that 
she would send the forces to defend or recover Calais 
without loss of time. When both Calais and Guisnes 
had been surrendered, however, it seemed better to 
Philip to curb somewhat the Queen's ardour in the 
matter. It was too early in the year for him to 
begin his regular campaign, and it was obvious that 
without his powerful co-operation the English troops 
alone would be unable to recapture the lost fortresses. 
So the first letter written by the King to Feria after 
the arrival of the latter in England was couched in 
the cool, prudent tone so characteristic ot him. The 
ambassador was to thank the Queen heartily for her 
good-will to send him the troops, even after Calais 
had been lost, but as his own territories were not 
in present danger, " I do not wish the Queen to 
begin yet to incur expense, especially as we shall 
have to spend a great deal later in attempting to 
recover the ancient English territory. You will 
therefore tell the Queen how highly I appreciate 
her affectionate regard for my interests ; but as I have 
now sufficient forces to hold my own I hope she will 
countermand the sending of troops, and apply the 
money to defending the English coast, which is of the 
greatest importance." ^ 

Before receiving this letter Feria saw Mary in 
the Palace of Greenwich on the day he arrived, 
26th January, 1558, and found her, as usual, eager 
to serve Philip's interests. Feria said he only wished 
that her Councillors were as willing as she. She 
would, she said, summon the Council at once that 
Feria might discuss matters with them ; but as 
Parliament was sitting it was Friday, 28th, before 
^ MSS. Simancas, Philip to Feria, January, 1558. — Estado, 811. 



FERIA AND THE ENGLISH 155 

Feria and the resident ambassador, Figueroa, met 
the Councillors in Cardinal Pole's room. Feria had 
agreed with the Queen as to the tone he should adopt 
with the Council. It was being murmured in London, 
and even in the Council itself, that this misfortune had 
fallen upon the nation because Philip had dragged it 
into the war ; and Mary urged upon Feria that he 
should anticipate any such talk as that by saying at 
once that as Calais had been lost during a war which 
the English had undertaken on Philip's behalf, he 
considered it his duty to help them to recover the 
fortress. The first need, however, he said, was to 
ensure the coasts of England from attack. What 
did the Council propose to do in the matter? Heath, 
who was the spokesman, was apologetic and 
despondent. The nation was in dire danger and 
its resources were very low : they agreed that defence 
of England must precede recovery of the fortresses 
on the other side of the Channel, and thought it best 
not to send across the hasty levies already collected 
at Dover. Feria, who had seen the mob of recruits 
as he passed through Dover, quite agreed with them. 
They had only been sent, said the Councillors 
apologetically, because the Queen had insisted. As 
for the broad question of national defence, they asked 
for time to consider what they proposed ; and although 
Feria and Mary urged expedition, three days passed 
before the Council, headed by Heath, came in a body 
to Feria's lodging and laid before him their plan of 
campaign. 

In a harangue full of honied words for Philip 
the Chancellor set forth the poverty of the country, 
the need for a strong force on the Scottish border 
to defend the north from a French incursion, the 



156 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

undefended condition of Ireland, and, above all, the 
danger of the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, now that 
eighty French ships were collected at Dieppe with, it 
was feared, hostile intent. What they proposed was to 
fit out a hundred English vessels with fifty victualling 
smacks for service in the Channel, carrying an army 
of some fifteen thousand soldiers, ready, if Philip 
needed it, to land upon any spot on the northern 
French coast as a diversion. They were in fear, too, of 
a league of Denmark and the Free Cities to attack the 
northern coast of England in the interests of France; 
and they knew of no other means of raising a force to 
defend that part of the country than to beg the King 
to choose for them some good German mercenary 
leader who would engage to come over in their 
service with some three thousand Germans, to embark 
in Amsterdam for Newcastle. When they had found 
the money for all this, they said, they did not see how 
they could do more even to recover Calais. 

These proposals, which had indeed been suggested 
first by the Queen and Philip, were exactly those which 
suited the latter. Under the guise of defending the 
English south coast a large English fleet and army 
would be practically at his orders, to alarm and divert 
the French wherever he needed. Lord William 
Howard, I the Lord Admiral, a great-uncle of Eliza- 



^ Howard suspected the influence that had been exerted 
against him, and charged Feria with it. The Spaniard assured 
him that he had been misinformed ; and in order to molHfy 
him PhiHp wrote to the Queen asking her to give Howard 
some Court appointment instead of^he Admiralty. Clinton was 
by Philip's influence also placed in the Council, of which Howard 
was not a member, but became so, as well as Lord Chamber- 
lain, shortly afterwards. 



FERIA AND THE ENGLISH 157 

beth's, and little in Philip's favour, was by Feria's 
intrigues superseded by Clinton, who was his obedient 
servant. The great difficulty, of course, was money. 
Everyday Feria urged the need for raising large sums 
at once. Parliament was sitting, and it was believed 
would vote liberal supplies in view of the national 
danger ; and Mary herself once complaisantly told 
Feria that she believed Parliament would vote her 
a larger amount than had ever been granted to 
her father. " That is not to the purpose," replied 
Feria, " but to get all the money you want in the 
circumstances." The Earl of Sussex when in Flanders 
had given the King an Idea that the nobles in 
England might still be induced, as Spanish nobles 
were, to supply feudal contingents of mounted men on 
the Sovereign's demand ; but when Feria suggested 
this to the Queen she told him flatly that all the 
nobles of England together would not contribute 
a hundred horse. 

The loss of Calais was unquestionably a serious 
blow to the prestige of Mary. Already people were 
grumbling that this was what she and her Spanish 
husband had brought the nation to. Here was this 
haughty Count of Feria, too : what had he come over 
for but to carry some more English money out of the 
country to feed Philip's armies? This, of course, had no 
foundation whatever in truth, but the mere whispering 
of it made people stay away from the Catholic 
churches, and frown more sourly at the persecutions 
than they had done before. So far from carrying 
English money out, except to pay for the recruiting of 
the German mercenaries, whom Philip all along, how- 
ever, meant to use for his own purposes, the Councillors 
to a man began dunning Feria for their unpaid 



158 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Spanish pensions ; ^ for although the Spaniard scorn- 
fully complains of their unwillingness to serve Philip's 
interests first, they were all anxious for his money. 
The fear of invasion, which was, in fact, very remote, 
was industriously promoted by Feria and the 
Spaniards in order to keep the English Council up 
to their determination in raising forces which might 
be, and were, subsequently used by Philip for his own 
purposes when his summer campaign opened. These 
forces, however, did not satisfy Philip, who was some- 
what chagrined to find that the English Council was 
so ready to limit its efforts to the defence of the 
coasts, without insisting upon the recovery of Calais. 
He had counted upon using the national anger at the 
loss to bring when he most needed them a good 
English contingent across the Channel to join his 
army, though the hasty levies in January would 
have been worse than useless to him. 

Both the King and Feria were impatient at the 
cumbrous English constitutional way of raising 
money, and pestered poor Mary daily by word and 
letter to obtain resources by other means. This she 
knew, and said, was impossible in England, and might 
cost her her crown. One day Paget came to Feria 
with a great plan to raise the vast sum of 800,000 
crowns, in addition to the parliamentary vote, and the 
Spaniards were all eager to put it into practice ; but 
when the time to discuss it seriously came, Paget's 
proposal, to Feria's anger, reduced itself to a loan 



* Feria to the King, 12th February, 1558 (MSS. Simancas, 
Estado 811). Philip replied that he could not send the 10,000 
crowns required at once, as he was very short of money, 
but would send it as soon as he could get it in Spain. 



FERIA AND THE ENGLISH 159 

of ;^ 1 00, 000 to be raised by Gresham in Antwerp 
and ^80,000 to be borrowed from the London 
bankers. All would have been well managed, 
grumbled Paget, if he had the direction of affairs ; 
and the other Councillors thereupon fell to wrangling 
with him as to their responsibility. This was early 
in March, 1558, and Feria had quite lost patience with 
what he considered the ineptitude of Mary's advisers, 
which really meant their disinclination to surbordinate 
English interests entirely to the wishes of Philip and 
his minister. From the sitting of the Council just 
referred to Feria and his colleague Figueroa went off 
in a rage to the Queen to : " complain of the reply 
[about the money], and to warn her again of the 
danger in which the country and she herself are, her 
Councillors being so inept that, although they say 
that the country is not rich, they cannot devise means 
even to raise sufficient money to defend themselves 
and recover the prestige that has been lost. We 
dwelt much upon this, as much indeed as we could ; 
for the Queen was not fully aware of the poor service 
rendered by the English contingent which you had 
with your army last year. She was not even yet un- 
deceived as to their not having been the first to enter 
St. Quintin until yesterday, we told her amongst other 
things. She was much grieved and promised that 
she would press them again about the money at 
Greenwich, where she will go to-day. Her one 
thought is that your Majesty should come to her 
again. She seems still to believe that she is pregnant, 
though she does not say so openly. She promises me 
to send Gresham to Antwerp at once to borrow the 
;^ 1 00,000 they say have arranged. I think if that be 
the case, it would be easy to get them to borrow 



i6o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

another ;^ 100,000, though I have not pressed it until 
he is there." ^ 

Gresham's instructions are dated two days after 
this letter was written, 12th March. He had pre- 
viously been dismissed from his former post as royal 
financial agent at Antwerp, and his reappointment 
was probably owing to the fact that in the narrow 
condition of the national finances he alone had 
sufficient authority on the Continental money market 
to raise the funds required. He was to bargain for 
the loan of ;^ 100, 000 that had been offered through 
one Germayn Scholl for one year, and to ascertain 
what powder and other munitions of war could be 
obtained in Flanders for English use.^ Scholl was 
Gresham's kinsman by marriage, but the bargain does 
not seem to have been fully concluded, only ;^i 0,000 
being obtained from that source, 3 Gresham remaining 

^ MSS. Simancas, Estado 811, Feria to the King, loth March. 

^ Philip had written to Feria a day or two before saying that 
the Enghsh orders for powder, &c., in Flanders were so exces- 
sive that if they were made public the dealers would at once put 
up the price to his detriment, and he begged that the amount 
might be reduced. In Rymer's " Federa " there is a list of the 
munitions which Gresham was to obtain in conjunction with 
the Italian banker Bonvisi, who had advanced a loan to Mary : 
" 3,500 hackequebutts, 1,000 pistolets, 500 pondera (lbs.) de 
Mauches, 100,000 pondera (lbs.) petre salse (saltpetre), 3,000 
corselets, 2,000 mourreyens, 3,000 iron cappes, 8,000 lances and 
pikes." 

3 Feria, writing to the King on the 6th April, says in refer- 
ence to this : " Gresham writes that he has found much difficulty 
and has only taken up _;^io,ooo. I do not know how this comes 
to pass, for Paget and the rest of them told me at first that the 
loan for ^100,000 was already arranged with the merchants 
I wrote about, and I naturally thought that as it had been 
settled between them and me that Gresham should go straight 



GRESHAM IN FLANDERS i6i 

in Flanders until the summer, spending much of the 
money he could raise in munitions of war. He had 
been instructed to present letters of recommendation to 
King Philip, and to acquaint him with all he did. But 
Gresham, who was no admirer of the Spanish faction, 
appears to have been somewhat remiss in paying 
court to the King, for he failed to mention anything 
about him in his letters. Mary, who was always 
hankering for news of her husband, began to get 
restive at the omission, and her Secretary, Boxall, 
writes a private letter to Gresham in April hinting 
to him that he will make things easier all round if 
he will pay more court to the King, as the Queen 
asked about him. Gresham promptly took the hint 
and wrote a long letter to Mary, saying that he had 
just seen King Philip at a monastery outside Brussels, 
where he had passed Easter, " who is in right good 
health as your Majesties own harte can desyre." ^ 

Whilst Gresham in Flanders was thus borrowing 
and spending money, Feria was chafing at the lack ( 
of sympathetic activity in the Councillors in the 
direction he desired. Writing to Philip in March, 
he says : " Before God, I can do no more, Sire ! I 
do not know what to make of these people. For, 
believe me, your Majesty, from morning to night and 
from night to morning they are changing their minds 
about everything, and do what I can it is impossible 

to your Majesty that the aifair would be carried through at 
once. ... He took letters from the Council to your Majesty, 
and the Queen instructed him to go straight to you. Now it 
seems from what he writes that he has not been to Brussels, 
and he deserves punishment at your Majesty's hands, as I have 
told the Queen." — MSS. Simancas, Estado 8ii. 
== Foreign Calendar. 



i62 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

for me to make them understand what a state they are 
in — the worst, surely, that ever people were in before. 
If it were only for their own sakes, I should like to 
leave them to the mercy of those who would treat 
them as they deserve ; but I am afraid that they 
will drag us after them, as your Majesty knows. 
The Queen does, and says, all she can, and she 
really has spirit and goodwill ; but in all else there 
is nothing but trouble. As for the Cardinal, he is 
a dead man ; and although he has plucked up a 
little with what they write to him every day from 
Italy since the loss of Calais, he is not so warm as 
I should have liked to see him. Of all the rest of 
them, I really do not know which is the worst 
disposed to your interest. But I know that those 
whom you have favoured most serve you the 
least." I 
7 Feria noticed that Mary grew ever thinner and 
more despondent. She slept badly and was devoured 
with anxiety and yearning for her husband, whose 
letters came to her so rarely. Both she and Pole, 
indeed, were now almost negligible forces ; and Feria 
began to plot with a few of the Councillors upon 
whom he could depend to take into his own hands 
practically the direction of affairs. How it was 
manaofed is well set forth in a letter of his to the 
King of ist May, 1558. He has, he says, been 
able to hold a private conference with Privy Seal 
(Bedford) and the Admiral (Clinton) "about that 
enterprise they had proposed to me, and also to 
press them about the land armaments." They were 
i of opinion that they could raise a land army, and 
that the recovery of Calais would not be so difficult 
^ MSS Simancas, loth March, 1558, Estado 811. 



FERIA'S INTRIGUERS ' ^^^3 ^ 

as people imagined. "They say that they could"" ." 
get together 12,000 English and German infantry, 
3,000 horse (2,000 Germans and 1,000 English), 
2,000 English pioneers, and if your Majesty did 
not think well of the enterprise they might be used 
for other purposes. I did not dwell so much upon 
this point as upon getting the force together. They 
think, and quite rightly, that it is useless to deal with 
this matter with more than four or five persons who 
will be in favour of it ; and they propose besides 
themselves Jerningham, the Master of the Rolls, who 
was the Solicitor-General (Cordell), and the Controller 
(Rochester), although the latter is a man who always 
raises difficulties to everything. I think that these 
three will suit best for the purpose, as they are 
favoured by the Queen. 
^/v.A.<«j i^now of no other way to remedy matters but"^ 
this : that your Majesty should write to the Queen 
saying that on mature deliberation you have decided 
that the best course will be for her Majesty to raise 
these troops, beginning with the money voted by 
Parliament : for as soon as the people see your 
Majesties determined to avenge the loss of Calais 
you believe that they will favour the enterprise, 
since no prince ever begins a war with all the money 
in hand necessary to finish it. You might add that 
nothing should be said about spending the Parliament 
money, but that it should be entrusted to some person 
for the object in view. Paget thinks that Bacon 
would be a fit person for this, and the Queen would 
agree to him. Your Majesty should also write to her 
that the business should be discussed with nobody but 
the five persons mentioned. Paget, Clinton, myself, 
and Figueroa think that this is the last thing we can 



i64 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

do. Paget thought lately that Rutland would be the 
best man to command this force, and we think that 
Clinton and the Vice- Admiral should conduct the fleet. 
The fleet is now ready and is costing money with no 
profit. Even if your Majesty does not think well to 
press the Queen about the foregoing business you 
might send her instructions at once as to what she 
is to do with this fleet." ^ 
-y It will be seen by this that the plan was to use 
every atom of the force raised in England and with 
English money, not for the defence of the country 
itself, which had been the first pretext for raising it, 
but to send across the sea, either to aid in the 
recovery of Calais or, at Philip's option, for any 
other purpose he might choose, and that similarly 
the fleet was to be placed at his disposal. ^ It is quite 
plain from the way in which Feria writes of her that 
Mary was simply to be told what to do by Philip, 
and that she was expected to do it without demur. 
How completely she hung upon Philip's words, and 
_jsubordinated everything to his wish,' is seen in a 
paragraph in the same letter as that quoted above 
from Feria to the King. A Swedish envoy had arrived 
' in England with an offer of marriage to Elizabeth 
from Prince Eric, the heir to the crown. He had 
been already several days in London and had not 
even asked audience of the Queen, though he had 
committed the gross breach of propriety of going 

' MSS. Simancas, Estado 8ii. 

^ In the letter written by Philip to Feria in reply to that 
quoted above he says that he has written to Clinton ordering 
him to go to Flanders at once to receive Philip's orders as 
to what he is to do with the English fleet, "in order that 
the money it is costing should not be spent fruitlessly." — 
MSS. Simancas, Estado 8ii. 



DECLINE OF MARY 165 

down to Hatfield and delivering the Prince's letter 
to Elizabeth before he saw Mary. The poor Queen 
was terribly upset at this ; and hearing that Feria was 
despatching a courier to Antwerp, she feared that he 
was going to write to Philip about it. Sending for 
Feria she with tears and reproaches upbraided him for 
his supposed intention, and said that she herself was 
going to write to her husband telling him all about 
it. " When the ambassador from Sweden first came," 
writes Feria, " she was in great trouble, fearing that 
your Majesty would blame her for not having carried 
through that affair last year [i.e., the marriage of 
Elizabeth with Savoy]. Since then, however, Madam 
Elizabeth has replied that she will not marry ; and 
the Queen is more tranquil, but she is intensely 
impassioned in the matter ; and one of the reasons 
for her grief at the pregnancy having turned out 
fallacious is the fear that it will cause you to press 
her in this other business [i.e., the marriage of Eliza- 
beth]. Both Figueroa and I think that your Majesty 
ought to do so apropos of the coming of this Swedish 
ambassador and the failure of the pregnancy. But 
it is necessary that such pressure should not come 
at the same time as the matter of the land armament, 
or it will upset the business altogether. In short, 
Sire, I believe that the Queen will not stand in 
the way of her {i.e., Elizabeth] being Queen if God 
does not send you children." ^ 

Already Elizabeth's sun was seen to be in the 
ascendant, and, regardless of the feelings of her sister 
the Queen, it suited Spanish policy to ensure her 
marriage, if possible, with a nominee dependent upon 
Philip. How anxious Philip personally was not to 
^ MSS. Simancas, Estado 811. 



i66 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

lose touch of Elizabeth at this juncture is seen in his 
reply at the end of May to a suggestion of Feria 
that the latter should go to Hatfield and pay his 
respects to her before he left England : "What you 
say about visiting Madam Elizabeth before you 
depart appears to me to be very wise, for the 
reasons you point out, and I am writing to the 
Queen, saying that I have ordered you to go. You 
will act accordingly ; and I have no doubt that when 
the Queen sees the firmness with which I write on 
the subject she will consent." ^ Philip's fiery and 
impetuous ambassador Feria went considerably 
beyond his master in his high-handed dealing with 
the English Government ; for Philip's methods were 
diplomatic and far-seeing, and his object was not to 
ride roughshod over his wife's country, as Feria 
would have done, but to use its resources for his 



^ Feria's suggestion, to which this is a reply, runs thus : " I 
wrote to your Majesty that I did not see Madam Ehzabeth 
when I came here because my principal means of carrying 
through what I wanted was the goodwill of the Queen, and I 
was anxious not to run counter to her in anything, especially as 
your Majesty had given me no instructions to the contrary. I 
afterwards sent a message of apology to Madam Elizabeth by 
the Admiral's wife [i.e., Lady Clinton], who was brought up 
with her and is much in her favour. I said that after she left 
[London] I had received orders from your Majesty to pay my 
respects to her in your name. I told Paget to excuse me to her 
also, but I do not think he did so. On the contrary, the 
Admiral's wife told me that he asked Madam Elizabeth whether 
I had visited her, and when she said no he expressed much 
surprise. Figueroa and myself think the matter should not be 
left thus, and that it would be best for me to go and see 
her before I leave. She lives 20 miles away. I shall be glad 
of your Majesty's instructions" (MSS. Simancas, Estado 811, 
Feria to the King, i8th May). 



FERIA AND THE ENGLISH 167 

ends, as if without design, and to perpetrate his 
hold upon it after his wife's death. _^ 

Mary, still suffering from her usual indispositions, ^ 
persuaded herself in May that Philip was coming over 
to see her again. It was, as Feria said, unreasonable; 
for Philip was overweighted with business, arranging 
the summer campaigns and a thousand other things : 
but Mary, full of hope again, caused herself to be carried 
to St. James's to be ready to receive her husband, and 
had horses and lodgings prepared for him from Dover 
to Gravesend and an escort of ships at Dover to 
convey him across. Feria told her blankly that the 
King was too busy to come, and again pressed her 
about raising the land army to reinforce Philip in 
Flanders. He found her less ready in the matter 
than he had hoped — "for the Cardinal and Council 
persuade her as they like " — and she wearily suggested 
that Clinton should go to Brussels to discuss the 
matter with the King. "This," said Feria, "was 
only because they think that I push them too hard ; 
and they believe they can deal more easily with your 
Majesty, their real object being to upset the scheme 
altogether ; " and the ambassador continues by recom- 
mending the King when Clinton arrived in Brussels 
to deal with him high-handedly, blaming the Council 
angrily for their slackness in the past. Clinton was 
evidently the most pliant tool of all ; and yet, even of 
him, Feria writes : " Nothing that he says will be 
true, unless he thinks it will be investigated. I have 
had no end of trouble about this, for they do nothing 
but lie and prevaricate." 

All this haughty pressure on the part of Feria, and ' 
the servile compliance of Paget and the rest of the 
Spanish clique, in order to bully the English into 



i68 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

raising a large force to join Philip's army on the pretext 
of recovering Calais, was seen by the politic King 
to be unwise. The English fleet, with its seven thou- 
sand soldiers on board, might be useful for him in many 
ways, and he made much of Clinton when he saw him 
in Brussels, urging him to have the fleet provisioned 
and ready for service whenever ordered from June to 
September ; but the raising of a land army of English- 
men did not suit him : in the first place because it 
would pledge him to a regular campaign against the 
French in Calais for the ultimate benefit of England 
alone, to the neglect of the Flemish frontier that 
concerned him most, and secondly, as he says, 
because " the English, as they would arm unwillingly, 
however much they were pressed and encouraged, 
would not be of much use. I can even see that they 
might cause more inconvenience than otherwise. 
Either they might come so badly organised and weak 
as to be easily defeated, which would be most injurious, 
or they might force me to go to their rescue, and upset 
my own plans." The King was of opinion that the 
English had much better concentrate their land 
strength on the Scottish frontier and in Ireland, so 
long as he was allowed to do as he liked with the 
English fleet. 

The meaning of this is made abundantly clear, and 
Philip's own foresight vindicated by the sequel. If the 
English Council were encouraged to employ all their 
own forces on the Scottish Border it was foreseen that 
they would not need the three thousand or more 
German auxiliaries which were now mustering on the 
Rhine under the leader Wallerdun, much of the money 
for them having been already disbursed by the English 
special agents in Flanders, Sir William Pickering and 



FERIA AND THE ENGLISH 169 

others. Feria, in his letter of i8th May to the King, 
says : " I understand that these people already repent of 
having asked for the three thousand Germans, for their 
view now is only to defend their own shores, and the 
Scots will not trouble them. They have said nothing to 
me about it yet, but I know that what I say is true. . . . 
If they do not want to bring these 3,000 Germans 
over, your Majesty might consider whether you will 
ask for them for yourself." This, although it was 
exactly what Philip himself desired and intended, was 
only effected after much wrangling about the money 
spent and the responsibility incurred by the English 
Council. Philip, writing on the loth June, instructs 
Feria cunningly to manage so that the Council may 
be got to propose that the German mercenaries might 
be taken off their hands as a favour ; but if they could 
not be got to see it in this light that the Queen should 
be told in confidence that the King needed the 
Germans very much. The Council proved recalcitrant ; 
for, as they said, they had spent already a large sum 
upon the mercenaries, and might need them ; but they 
had to give way before the pressure of the Queen and 
Feria, insisting ultimately, however, that Philip should 
pay the sum of ;^2,ooo for which Gresham had made 
himself responsible but had not paid for the arms 
supplied. The recruiting money of the Germans 
and first month's pay was lost. 

Relations between the imperious Feria and the 
English Council became daily more strained, every 
unimportant point was made a question of dignity by 
the ambassador, I and the sick, disconsolate Queen 

^ A good instance of this is given in the appointment of theT 
commander of 1,000 EngHsh pioneers who had been raised for 
PhiHp's service. Feria wished to send Major Randolph in 



I70 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

between the jarring elements, wishing to conciliate 
both sides, was rendered doubly unhappy. From 
Feria's contemptuous and insulting references to Pole 
it is evident that the Cardinal declined to become an 
instrument for purely Spanish ends ; whilst all the rest 
of the Councillors are dismissed by the ambassador in 
his letters to the King as lying rascals intent only 
upon plunder. Looking beyond Feria's intemperate, 
angry words, the principal sin of the Councillors in 
his eyes seems to have been a disinclination to 
squander money of which the nation was so sorely in 
need upon raising forces without some assurance that 
they would be used for English ends. Already people 
were grumbling that the powerful fleet under Clinton 
was to be merely an auxiliary of Philip in the war, at 
his entire disposal, and the continued bad fortune that 
followed the Spanish arms increased the anger in 
England at being thus tied to the tail of Philip in the 
war, without any attempt being made by him to 
recover the lost English fortresses. 

So far from doing this, indeed, news came early in 
July that Dunkirk, one of the most useful of his ports, 
within a few miles of Calais, had been captured by the 
French, as well as Thionville, an important fortress. 
Mary was panic-stricken at the news, and summoned 
Feria from Durham House to say that she must at 
once send off a courier to Philip to know the truth. 
Feria made light of the news, and said it was not 
worth while to send in such haste, and the over- 
charge of them. The Councillors appointed another man and 
said that Randolph was to be appointed to a post on shore in 
connection with the navy. Feria insisted, and a long quarrel 
resulted, Feria insisting that Philip should write peremptorily to 
the Queen about it. 



FERIA DEPARTS 171 

burdened Queen broke out in angry reproaches at 
his indifference. How could her merchants send their 
wool to Flanders, she asked, if Dunkirk was in 
French hands ? and yet Feria treated the matter 
as of no importance. But when the ambassador 
suggested that the English fleets in Plymouth and 
Dover should at once sail to Dunkirk to help the 
King, Mary eagerly assented, though the Council at 
once vetoed it ; for, said they, the French have also 
captured Alderney, and it behoved the admiral to go 
there first. '* And really, to tell your Majesty the 
truth," wrote Feria, " I did not dare to contradict 
them, for I saw that if but four French ships were to 
land their companies in England they would overturn 
everything." This was written in July, and shortly 
afterwards Feria, having hectored the English Queen 
and Council thus into placing the English fleet almost 
entirely at Philip's disposal, and having raised and 
paid three thousand German mercenaries which he had 
appropriated, took his leave and returned to Flanders, 
first visiting Elizabeth at Hatfield, much, he says, to 
her and his pleasure : ** for reasons which I will tell 
your Majesty when I see you." 

Mary now was a mere shadow. The cruel persecu- 
tions and the loss of Calais together had completely 
destroyed the belief of the people in her power to rule 
England for its own benefit. Her father and grand- 
father, and even the greatly inferior Northumberland, 
had managed to maintain the balance of power 
between the two great Continental rivals upon which 
the importance of England depended. Mary from 
the first day of her accession, as we have seen, had 
neglected this essential point in English policy, and 
had ended by becoming a mere satellite of the 



172 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Spanish King, involving her country thus in a ruinous 
war, in which it had lost much and had nothing to 
gain. The Council, against which Feria raged so 
savagely, was, it is true, after the death of Gardiner, 
composed of men of no commanding ability ; but it 
had done its best to prevent the utter subjection of 
England to Philip's aims. The success of its efforts 
was not great ; for as Feria's correspondence shows | 
the most active members of the Council were bought 
body and soul by Spain, and Mary was in most cases 
ready to back up Feria's arrogant hectoring with her 
royal authority. For her, in her forlorn condition, the 
first consideration was to please her husband and pre- 
vent the Catholic power, upon which she increasingly 
depended, from collapse. 

Her great hope was that Philip might be lured back 
again to her side to live in prosperity and peace. 
Again and again her fond hopes were disappointed, 
and, a prey to a constitutional disorder, she sank 
deeper and deeper in despondency. After Feria left 
her in July she continued ailing, whilst those around 
her, seeing the approach of the inevitable change, 
busied themselves in plans which might, if they were 
fortunate, save them from disaster in the future. For 
men of all opinions recognised that it was not alon^a 
woman who was dying, but a political and religious 
system that had failed ; and vengeance was sharpening 
its knife, whilst those who had thus made England the 
servant of a foreigner and a prey to the bigots . wer^ 
trembling for the wrath to come. 

Early in September a fever came to add to the 
Queen's ailments, and this, being an unusual symptom 
with her, caused grave anxiety ; but Philip's Flemish 
councillor Dassonleville, who was in London to inquire 



MARY MORTALLY ILL 173 

whether any league was being negotiated between 
England, Sweden, and Denmark, wrote early in 
October that both the Queen and Cardinal Pole were 
better than they had been since the beginning of their 
maladies. Parliament met at Westminster on the 5th 
November, and in it resounded loud complaints, bold 
and unsuppressed now, of the cost and damage to 
England caused by the war undertaken to please King 
Philip, and suggestions were made that the peace 
negotiations already in progress should be actively 
pushed. The great question, moreover, that was 
occupying all minds was that of the succession ^o the 
Crown when the Queen should die. "If your Majesty 
could have been present it would have been of the 
greatest importance in moving the Parliament to your 
desires," wrote Dassonleville. " But if that be im- 
possible, and important affairs should detain you in 
Flanders, the coming of the Count de Feria, who is 
much liked here, ^ would serve, nevertheless, to direct 

^ This was certainly not the case. Suriano, the Venetian" 
ambassador, writing from Brussels on the 12th November, on 
Feria's hasty voyage to England, when Mary was known to be 
dying, says drily : " He is in great favour with the Queen and 
he likewise fancies himself popular there [in England], but may 
God grant, in case of her Majesty's death, that he do not experi- 
ence to his detriment the perverse nature of those people, and 
their most inveterate hatred of foreigners and above all of 
Spaniards" (Venetian Calendar, 12th November). The fable of 
Feria's great power in England persisted for years, probably 
owing to his marriage with Sir William Dormer's daughter Jane, 
which brought him into relationship with the Sidneys and a 
powerful group of English noble families. Dr. Man, the 
English ambassador in Spain in 1567, writes to Cecil (Cotton 
MSS., Galba ciii.) that he had heard a Spanish gentleman say at 
table that the " Count de Feria was so beloved in England that 
in case he would he might have made himself King of England. 
Which although it be an untruth yet it argueth a confidence the 



174 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

affairs so far as the time will allow. Many of the 
Council are beginning to understand how necessary 
the alliance of Flanders is to this realm, the salvation 
of which depends upon it, as England cannot alone 
withstand for long the efforts of its old enemies, the 
French and Scots, without the aid of your Majesty. 
The common people do not understand it yet, and 
talk of allying the Lady Elizabeth with the Earls of 
Westmorland or Arundel, and sometimes with a Prince 
of Sweden or Denmark, so inconstant are they." ^ 

It is quite evident that when Dassonleville speaks 
of the impossibility of England holding its own with- 
out Philip's aid he meant under the existing system. 
In this, of course, he was right ; but he overlooked 
the fact that if the country freed itself from the 
Spanish connection, which had dragged it down, and 
once more dexterously held the balance between the 
two Powers, neither would attack it, because neither 
would be benefited by weakening a possible useful 
ally. But the English people were quite awake to 
the alternative if Dassonleville was not, and were 
looking anxiously away from the sad sufferer who had 
failed as a Queen and was awaiting extinction in St. 
James's, to the demure, self-controlled young woman 
who bided her time so patiently and so confidently at 
Hatfield. She knew now she would not have to wait 
long. " Sire," continued Dassonleville, " the Queen 
has had some good intervals since her grave malady ; 
and for some days past has been quieter from her 

Spaniards have of some great part the Count is yet able to make 
in England." In fact, Feria, whose hatred of Elizabeth was 
intense, was extremely unpopular for his arrogance and pre- 
sumption in England. 
" ^ MSS. Simancas, Estado 8ii. 



MARY AND ELIZABETH 175 

paroxysms. The issue of her illness is as yet 
uncertain. The people make her out to be worse 
than the doctors say, and rumour says that a change 
is so imminent that it will cause the enemy to be 
the more obstinate about the restoration of Calais. 
Nevertheless, if your Majesty insists upon not making 
peace without it, they will have to put up with it." ^ 

This was written on the 6th November ; but 
before the letter was despatched Dassonleville heard 
from Paget that the Queen's malady being recognised 
as grave, the Council had requested her to make 
some pronouncement with regard to the succession. 
Mary, feeling the hand of death upon her, consented 
to a deputation of the Council waiting upon the 
Princess at Hatfield on the morrow, to tell her that 
the Queen was willing that she should succeed when 
she (Mary) should die, only begging two things of 
her — one to maintain the old religion, and the other to 
pay the debts she (Mary) had incurred. It was 
known by this that the gravest anticipations of the 
people were justified. Ten days before this Philip 
had learnt that his wife was not likely to live, and he 
had at once instructed Feria to start for England, for 
the special purpose of pushing forward urgently the 
question of Elizabeth's marriage, which was now seen 
to be the only means by which he might still hold 
England. As has been already explained in previous 
pages, Mary had on each former occasion when the 
matter had been urged firmly stood out against it, as 
well as Elizabeth herself. Once the Queen had been 
won over for a day to the Savoy project, but Cardinal 

^ Philip was already in peace negotiations with the French ; 
and the English Commissioners were holding out strongly for 
the restitution of Calais as a condition. 



176 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Pole had changed her mind, and nothing had been 
done. The bold offer of the Swedish prince had 
shown to Mary as well as to Philip the danger of 
Elizabeth's accepting a Protestant marriage; and even 
at this late hour Philip determined to make a desperate 
effort through Feria to win Elizabeth for a nominee 
who would suit him. Suriano, the Venetian ambas- 
sador with Philip, writes ^ with regard to Feria's mis- 
sion : " The Count's instructions are that he is to try 
and dispose the Queen to consent to Lady Elizabeth's 
marriage as her sister, and with the prospect of 
succeeding to the Crown. This negotiation is being 
conducted with the utmost secrecy, as they suspect 
that were the French to learn of it they would easily 
find means to thwart the project, as the greater part 
of England is opposed to the Queen and most hostile 
to King Philip and his party, whilst strongly inclined 
to Lady Elizabeth, who was always attached to the 
French faction rather than the other." Feria tarried 
a few days in Flanders when the news came that 
Mary was somewhat better ; but Dassonleville's and 
Cordova's letters, foreshadowing, as they did, Mary's 
rapid passing, sent him hurrying across to England 
in order to perform his mission before she should die. 
The great obstacle to the marriage with Savoy — 
apart, of course, from Elizabeth's own reluctance — had_ 
now disappeared, for Mary had recognised her sister 
as her successor, without which her marriage would 
have been useless to Philip. 

Feria arrived in London on the 9th November, and 

he found England in a turmoil. Whispers spread 

every few days that the Queen was indeed dead, and 

that her Council only kept back the news until King 

^ Venetian Calendar, 29th October, 1558. 



MARY DYING 177 

Philip should come with the strong hand. " Every 
man's mynde was then travayled with a strange 
confusione," says Hay ward, who lived through the 
crisis, " all things being immoderately eyther dreaded 
or desired. Every report was greedily both inquired 
and received, all truthes suspected, diverse tales 
believed, many improbable conjectures hatched and 
nourished. Invasion of strangers, civil dissentions, 
the doubtfull dispositione of the succeeding prince, 
were cast in every man's conceite as present perills ; 
but noe man did buysy his witts in contriving^ 
remedyes." Whilst her people were anxiously look^f 
ing to the future, some with dread and some with 
hope, the Queen lay in anguish waiting for the end. 
It was only five years since, full of faith and belief 
in her system, she had passed over ruined ambitions 
amidst the acclamations of the people to the throne of 
her fathers. In that short time, with the best of 
intentions, she had sapped the basis of England's 
international importance, she had opened wide the 
doors of religious persecution, and, so far as she 
could, had laid the resources of her country at the 
feet of her foreign husband. She was leaving 
England poorer in possessions, in power and in spirit, 
than it had been at any time since her grandfather 
brought to an end the civil strife of a century. She 
had sacrificed her people's welfare and happiness, 
as well as her own popularity, by obstinately ignoring 
accomplished facts and leaning upon a foreign Power 
to enable her to restore a state of things that was 
dead. 

The Queen was only partially conscious and unable ' 
to read Philip's letter when Feria came to bring her a 
message from her husband, and he lost no time in 



178 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

travelling to Hatfield on his principal mission. Eliza- 
beth had been so wary and diplomatic in her difficult 
circumstances that she was as yet an unknown 
quantity ; and doubtless the crafty men of the world 
who proposed to win her for Spain anticipated no 
great difficulty from this reticent young woman of five- 
and-twenty, who had accepted Catholicism so readily. 
The country was profoundly divided, and it was 
thought that the new Queen — as Dassonleville wrote, 
in ofood faith — would be unable to establish her 
authority without help from abroad. It was there- 
fore, on the face of it, not an extravagant presumption 
that she might prefer to follow her sister's lead 
and adhere to the traditional policy of England in 
allying herself with the sovereign of Spain and 
Flanders. 

When Feria arrived at Hatfield he received his 
first surprise. Before starting from London he had 
summoned the Council, and in Philip's name had 
approved of Elizabeth as the heir to the Crown. 
Believing that this would enable him to claim 
Elizabeth's thanks, he began at Hatfield to enlarge 
upon the service Philip had done her in thus securing 
to her the succession. So long as high-flown compli- 
ment had been the staple of conversation Elizabeth 
had given Feria as good as he had brought ; but the 
moment he bespoke her gratitude she stopped him, 
and said that she would owe her Crown to no one 
but her people ; and when he broadly hinted at the 
advantage to her of a marriage with her Spanish 
brother-in-law or a nominee of his she evaded the 
suggestion dexterously. ^ All through the interview 

^ The letter from Feria, dated 14th November, detailing this 
interview with Elizabeth was abstracted by Gonzalez many 



DEATH OF MARY 179 

she showed a determination to resist any attempts 
to place her in the tutelage of Philip. She answered 
Feria, indeed, somewhat tartly at one point, that 
her sister had lost her people's love by marrying 
a foreigner ; and the ambassador left her already 
convinced that she would be no docile instrument 
in his master's hands, as her sister had been. 

Mary and Pole lay dying at the same time, fortified 
by the rites of their Church, whose services were 
celebrated ceaselessly before their weary eyes. With, 
the Queen there were few now to do her reverence, 
for most of her courtiers and Councillors were flocking 
to Hatfield to worship the rising sun ; but Mx.s.^ 
Clarencius, the Countess of Feria (Jane Dormer, 
Mary's favourite maid of honour), and a few other 
faithful friends stood by her to the last. On 
the morning of the i6th November the Council 
assembled in her room, and Cordell, the Master of 
the Rolls, read aloud the Queen's will, although 
Mary was unconscious at the time. Feria asserts 
that when the reader reached the bequests to her 
personal attendants the Council desired him to omit 
that portion. In any case, little attention was after- 
wards paid to the Queen's testament, for there were 
none who loved or mourned the forlorn woman. 
Before dawn on the 17th November Mass was cele- 
brated in the dying chamber in the Palace of St. 
James. Like her mother on her death-bed in similar 

years ago with other papers of the period and translated into 
EngHsh. Unfortunately since then the letter appears to have 
been lost. At least I could not find it when I transcribed the 
other letters of the period relating to England in the Spanish 
Royal Archives at Simancas. The letter, however, v^^as printed 
in Kervyn de Lettenhove's " Relations Politiques," &c. 



i8o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

circumstances, Mary followed the sacred office 
devoutly, in the full possession now of her faculties, 
making the responses audibly and fervently. When 
the celebrant appealed to "the Lamb of God who 
took upon Himself the sins of the world," Mary 
answered clearly ''Miserere nobis ^ Miserere nobis ^ Dona 
nobis pacem." ^ These cries for mercy, for mercy and 
peace, were the last words of unhappy Mary 
Tudor. A few moments afterwards, as the priest 
held up before her the Sacramental Host, her eyes" 
flushed with tears, and then closed for ever. Philip 
_had no longer any footing in England. He must win 
one again by force or favour, unless Spain was to 
surrender her proud supremacy and Catholicism cease 
to rule the world. 

^ From Father Clifford's contemporary " Life of the Duchess 
of Feria " (pubHshed), for the inspection of the original manu- 
script of which I am indebted to its present possessor, Lord 
Dormer. 



CHAPTER V 



1558-1565 

Accession of Elizabeth — The beginning of the long duel — Feria 
urges Philip to use force — Philip's many difficulties — He offers his 
hand to Elizabeth — The Peace of Cateau Cambresis — The Franco- 
Spanish Alliance — Fears of a Catholic League — Philip marries a French 
Princess — English Catholics appeal to Philip — Mary Stuart claims the 
Crown of England — War with Scotland — Philip's efforts to effect a 
reconciliation — Bishop Quadra— His relations with Leicester — Intrigue 
for a Catholic reaction in England — Mary Stuart approaches Philip — 
Disgrace and death of Quadra — A war of tariffs — Guzman de Silva, 
ambassador — The interviews of Bayonne — Failure of the Catholic 
League 



T 



HOUGH Mary's death had long been foreseen, 
Feria was distracted when it came, for change 
was on all sides, and each change unfavourable 
to Spanish interests. " It is very early," he wrote, 
*' to talk about marriage yet ; but the confusion and 
instability of these people in all their affairs make it 
necessary for us to be the more alert, so as not to lose 
the opportunities that may offer, and especially in the 
matter of marriage. . . . The new Queen and the 
people hold themselves free from your Majesty, and 
will listen to any ambassadors who may come to treat 
of marriage. Your Majesty understands better than I 
how important it is that this affair should go through 
your hands, which will be difficult except with great 
negotiations and expenditure." He continues by 

urging Philip not to allow the Emperor Ferdinand 

181 



i82 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

to offer the hand of either of his sons to Elizabeth, 
and opines that the English would not favour Savoy, 
whilst, he says, the nobles recognise that it would be 
impossible for the Queen to marry an Englishman. 
This was, of course, preliminary to the suggestion of 
Feria that Philip should marry Elizabeth himself 
" The more I think of this business the more certain 
I am that everything depends upon the husband this 
woman may take. If he be a suitable one, religious 
matters will go on well, and the realm will remain 
friendly with your Majesty ; but if not, all will be 
spoilt. If she decides to marry out of the country 
she will at once fix her eyes upon your Majesty, 
although some of them here will be sure to pitch 
upon the Archduke Ferdinand." ^ 

Feria, who had lorded over Mary's Council, found 
the members now sorely changed. They had mostly 
been bribed heavily by him, and the ambassador 
roundly abuses them for their ingratitude. They 
were indeed, such of them as were included in 
Elizabeth's Council, too anxious to clear themselves 
from the odium of the past to smile upon the 
unpopular Spanish connection ; though secretly Lord 
William Howard, Clinton, and Paget promised their 
services to Feria. As for the people at large, the 
death of Mary was to them as if a crushing weight 
had been lifted from their hearts. Even as she lay 
dying, the sacred things — the images, relics, and the 
like — of which she had enforced the veneration, were 
openly slighted; and Feria wrote a few days after her 
death : " The people are wagging their tongues a 
good deal about the Queen's having sent great sums 
of money to your Majesty, and that I have sent you 
* Spanish Calendars of Elizabeth (Hume). 



ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH 183 

200,000 ducats since I came. They say that it is 
through your Majesty that the country is in such 
want, and that Calais was lost ; and also that through 
your not coming to see the Queen she died of grief." 

Under Cecil's guidance Elizabeth's first steps were 
prudent and wise in the extreme. The religious 
burnings were at once stopped, and those persons 
who were imprisoned on the charge of heresy were 
enlarged on their own recognisances ; but most of the 
members of Mary's Catholic Council were retained, 
though reinforced by seven new Protestant Councillors, 
Cecil and Parry being given the most influential 
duties. But, moderate though the new rulers were, 
the Catholics, and especially the Spanish party, were 
in dismay. Only a week after the Queen's accession 
Feria wrote to Philip: "The kingdom is entirely in 
the hands of young folks, heretics, and traitors, and 
the Queen favours no man who served her sister. The 
old people and the Catholics are dissatisfied, but dare 
not open their lips. The Queen seems to me incom- 
parably more feared than her sister was, and gives her 
orders as absolutely as her father did." 

In the meanwhile the new Queen heard Mass, and 
made no change in religious observance, but she 
turned her back upon Bonner when he went to greet 
her with the other Bishops, and took care to show 
that, Catholic or Protestant, she was not going to be 
the submissive tool of either Spain or France, though 
she professed a desire to be friendly with both. 
"These people," wrote Feria, "try to make it known 
everywhere that your Majesty will have no more influ- 
ence here than if you had not married the late Queen, 
and they persuade the present Queen not to be intimate 
with me. As she is much taken up with the people, 



i84 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

she does as they wish her to do, and treats foreigners 
slightingly. I have therefore decided to go slowly 
until things settle down and I see who takes the lead. 
Up to the present nothing is certain, and every one 
talks as his wishes lead him. I wonder they have 
not sent me crazy. The whole point is the husband 
she chooses, and we must try by money arrangements 
that he shall be one agreeable to your Majesty." 

Elizabeth declined to receive personally either Feria 
or Dassonleville until she approached London, though 
Feria sent her an amiable message by Lady Clinton 
when she arrived at the Charter House, and a splen- 
did ring from Philip by Controller Parry. At the 
Charter House on the following day the ambassador 
first saluted the Queen. He was a gallant, handsome 
gentleman, one of the first nobles in Spain ; and 
Elizabeth was most gracious to him, taking off her 
glove as soon as he entered the room, in order that 
he might kiss her hand. The chamber was crowded 
with people, and it was, of course, no time for political 
business. He was only in England, he assured her, 
in order to serve her and let her royal brother-in-law 
know how best he might gratify her wishes, so as to 
help forward the good understanding already existing. 
Feria ventured to touch lightly upon religion, hoping 
that she would be careful on that point ; but to this 
she gave a broad reply, which Feria thought equivocal. 
When he left her she had almost allayed his fears, so 
fine was her diplomacy, and he sent her that day by 
Lady Clinton two more rings that had belonged to 
Mary — "as I saw she was so fond of her jewels, and 
I thought best to give her even the poorest of them." 

He saw her again three days afterwards at Somer- 
set House, where she was staying, and told her that 



ELIZABETH AND FERIA 185 

a truce had been settled between France and Spain 
during the peace negotiations. She showed her 
suspicions in a moment, thinking that the intention 
was to isolate her and leave her at hostilities with 
France. By means of Cecil, however, Feria per- 
suaded her that her fears were unfounded ; and in 
another conversation she exerted all her blandish- 
ments upon him to convince him that her leanings 
were not towards the French, whilst he further 
delighted her by telling her that he had at Whitehall 
and at her disposal a casket of jewels that had 
belonged to her sister. In this sort of intercourse 
Elizabeth was a match for any one living. It was 
not until Feria tried to pledge her to anything that 
he found out his powerlessness. He had occupied 
the royal residence called Durham Place, in the 
Strand, as a dwelling house, but he had also apart- 
ments at Whitehall, and he tried hard to obtain a 
renewal of these, "although I am much afraid they 
will not give it to me. I have little chance of talking 
to people unless I am inside the Palace, and they 
are so suspicious of me that, as the late Chancellor 
(Heath) plainly told me, nobody dares to speak to 
me. . . . They are very glad to be free of your 
Majesty, as though you had done them harm instead 
of good. Although in several of my letters to your 
Majesty I have said how small a party you have 
here, I am never satisfied that I have said enough to 
describe things as they really are. I am so isolated 
from them that I am much embarrassed and puzzled 
to get the means of discovering what is going on ; for 
truly they run away from me as if I were the devil. 
The best way will be for me to get my foot into the 
Palace, so as to speak oftener with the Queen, as she 
is a woman very fond of argument." 



i86 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

The great question for the Spaniards was EHza- 
beth's marriage. If she married a Protestant or a 
man open to French influence, the effect upon 
Spanish interests might be disastrous. The gossip 
on the subject at Court shifted from day to day — 
sometimes an English suitor, sometimes Prince Eric, 
sometimes one of the Archdukes, PhiHp's cousins, 
being the favourite. Savoy was always rejected by 
public voice, because of the fear that he might 
drag England into war with France to recover his 
dominions. None of the suitors mentioned except 
Savoy would have suited Spanish ends. The Arch- 
dukes, if they would accept the absolute dictation of 
their cousin Philip, would have been the least objec- 
tionable of the foreign Princes : but Philip was not 
on very good terms with the Austrian branch of his 
family at this time ; for he was still sore about the 
succession to the Empire, and the Archdukes were 
too much dependent upon the Lutherans to please 
him. So the conviction grew in Feria's mind that 
the only satisfactory solution would be for Philip to 
marry Elizabeth himself. He proposed to appeal to 
her pride, and to suggest that it would be beneath 
her to match less splendidly than her sister. Little 
did either he or his master understand the subtle 
mind with which they had to deal. Elizabeth was, 
of course, anxious to keep on good terms with them, 
and indeed to restore England to its former position 
as the balancing power, but, smile and coquette as 
she might, she would never allow herself to be drawn 
into a position from which she could not retreat. 

Feria — impatient, scornful, and proud — began to tire 
of this inconclusive dallying, especially as he saw, 
both at Court and outside, that the Protestants were 



SPANISH FEARS 187 

growing bolder, and the Queen herself was relaxing 
her orthodox observance. He complained bitterly 
to Philip that everything was hidden from him, and 
that he could learn nothing, though the Queen said 
that he knew too much about English affairs ; that 
he was proud, and that she would be glad if he were 
recalled. *' I am afraid," he wrote, " that one fine 
day we shall find this woman married, and I shall be 
the last man to learn anything about it. ... I over- 
look many things and try not to take offence or to 
appear inquisitive ; but their enmity and evil con- 
sciences make them so suspicious of me that they 
think I know everything, and in return for all my 
efforts to please, I believe that they would like to see 
me thrown into the river — that is to say, the Queen 
and her friends would — for the Catholics and goodly 
people are glad that your Majesty should gain ground 
here." 

The fear that Elizabeth would slip through their 
fingers was accentuated for the Spaniards by the idea 
that her proceedings in religion might induce the Pope 
to listen to French prompting and excommunicate her, 
declaring her throne forfeit to the next Catholic heir, 
Mary of Scotland, Dauphiness of France. Any- 
thing would have suited Philip better than that, and 
it appears to have been this consideration which 
finally moved him to dazzle the new Queen, and 
cut out all the other suitors by proposing formally 
to become her husband himself. Elizabeth had, of 
course, in her two previous conversations with Feria, 
understood his veiled allusions to the subject ; and 
when he had pressed his demand for rooms in the 
Palace of Whitehall, Elizabeth, with prudish modesty, 
sent word by Cecil that, as she was unmarried and 



i88 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Feria might be her suitor, it would be improper for 
him to sleep under the same roof. Feria, recognising 
the absurdity of the alleged reason, believed that the 
refusal was owing to French intrigue, and urged his 
master to act promptly. "Your Majesty must get 
the affair into your own grasp. We must look to it 
at once that the King of France does not get in and 
spoil the crop that your Majesty has sown here." 
Thus abjured, Philip took the plunge, once more in a 
pure spirit of martyrdom — not this time on account 
of disparity of age or lack of attraction on the part 
of his bride-elect, but rather because of her doubtful 
orthodoxy. 

It is difficult to understand how so sagacious a man 
as Philip can have been so blind to the character of his 
sister-in-law as to have believed that an offer made 
in the spirit displayed in his letter to his ambassador 
could have been accepted by her. On loth January, 
I559» the King wrote thus to Feria: "I highly 
approve of the course you have adopted in per- 
suading her and the Council that it is not to her 
interest to marry a subject. As regards myself, if 
she should broach the subject to you, you should 
treat it in such a way as neither to accept nor reject 
the suggestion entirely. In a matter of such grave 
importance it was necessary for me to take counsel 
and consider it maturely in all its bearings, before 
I sent you my decision. Many great obstacles 
present themselves, and it is difficult for me to 
reconcile my conscience to it, as I am obliged to 
reside in my other dominions, and consequently 
could not be much in England, which, apparently, 
is what they fear ; and also because the Queen has 
not been sound in religion, and it would not look 



PHILIP PROPOSES TO ELIZABETH 189 

well for me to marry her unless she were a Catholic. 
Besides this, such a marriage would appear like 
entering upon a perpetual war with France, seeing 
the claims that the Queen of Scots has to the English 
Crown. The urgent need for my presence in Spain, 
which is greater than I can say here, and the heavy 
expense I should be put to in England by reason of 
the costly entertainment necessary to the people there, 
together with the fact that my Treasury is so utterly 
exhausted as to be unable to meet the most pressing 
ordinary expenditure, much less new and onerous 
burdens : bearing in mind these and many other 
difficulties no less grave, ... I nevertheless cannot 
lose sight of the enormous importance of such a match 
to Christianity and the preservation of religion, which 
has been restored in England by the help of God. 
Seeing the importance that the country should not 
relapse into its former errors, which would cause to 
our neighbouring dominions serious dangers and 
difficulties, I have decided to put aside all other 
considerations which might be urged against it, and 
am resolved to render this service to God, and offer 
to marry the Queen of England ; and I will use 
every possible effort to effect this, if it can be done 
on the conditions that will be explained to you. The 
first and most important is that you should satisfy 
yourself that the Queen will profess the same religion 
that I do, the same that I ever shall hold, and that 
she will persevere in the same and uphold it in the 
country, doing with that end all that may appear 
necessary to me. She will have to obtain secret 
absolution from the Pope and the necessary dis- 
pensation, so that when I marry her she will be a 
Catholic, which she has not hitherto been. In this 



I90 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

way it is evident and manifest that I am serving the 
Lord in marrying her, and that she has been con- 
verted by my act. You will not propose any 
conditions until you see how the Queen is disposed 
towards the matter itself; and mark well that you 
must first broach the subject alone, as she has 
already opened the door to such an approach. "^ 
Later Philip mentions that the clause in his marriage 
treaty with Mary granting Flanders to the issue of 
the marriage could not be conceded in the case of 
Elizabeth. 

There are few letters extant that reveal so clearly 
as this does the character of Philip. As he points 
out in his long preamble, the objections to the match 
are numerous and grave. Elizabeth was of doubtful 
orthodoxy, excommunicate and officially declared a 
bastard, the daughter of a woman whom Catholic 
Spaniards looked upon as the personification of evil, 
and yet to marry her the proudest monarch on earth 
and the champion of the Church omnipotent was 
ready to salve his conscience, sacrifice personal desires 
and lavish upon a people he loathed the money wrung 
painfully from the Castilian subjects that he loved. 
The talk of his sacrifice to God no doubt was sincerely 
uttered and believed by himself, because he ever 
identified his political aims with the cause of the 
Almighty ; but the real reason for his willingness to 
marry Elizabeth in spite of everything was primarily 
to prevent England from slipping away from his grasp 
to the irreparable injury of his cause. If England 
became a Protestant power under Elizabeth, he 
foresaw that it would reinforce the elements in his own 

^ Spanish Calendars of Elizab h, vol. i. (Hume). 



A SACRIFICIAL PROPOSAL 191 

dominions with which his great struggle was even now 
visible on the horizon ; if it became Catholic under 
Mary Stuart, matters would be still worse for him, 
because his great rival France would then hold the 
whip hand over him for ever from across the Channel. 
It was a dire predicament for a proud, devout monarch 
to find himself in, and of the two great evils that 
threatened, Philip proposed to choose the lesser in 
marrying Elizabeth *' for the greater glory of God." 

But it takes two persons to make a marriage, and 
Elizabeth, unlike her sister, had no notion of allowing 
herself and England to be made the tools of another's 
ambitions, for she had ambitions of her own, and in 
most cases they were not identical with those of her 
brother-in-law. In one particular alone they coincided, 
namely, in the need for excluding the French from 
gaining control of England by means of Mary Stuart 
or otherwise, and this was the point that restrained 
Philip from proceeding to extremities with Elizabeth 
for thirty years of provocation. Feria, who was in 
closer touch with the progress of affairs in England 
than his master, must have seen the impracticability 
of proposing for Elizabeth's hand in the spirit of his 
instructions, and, although he saw her in the little 
chamber at Whitehall on the eve of the opening of 
Parliament on the 25th January, where she chatted 
very affably with him, he did not venture to mention 
the question of marriage, as he had been told that 
Parliament would press her to choose a husband, and 
thought that he had better wait until then. But Philip 
was impatient, the English Peace Commissioners at 
Cateau Cambresis, who had now been joined by Lord 
William Howard, were standing out firmly for the 
restoration of Calais as a condition of the general 



192 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

peace. ^ If Elizabeth showed herself ready to become 
Philip's wife and the obedient tool of his policy, he 
was willing to make a stand too on the subject of 
Calais ; but he was determined not to be kept at war 
for the sake of the English if Elizabeth persevered 
in her proposed Parliamentary action with regard to 
religious reform, and he peremptorily instructed Feria 
to remonstrate earnesdy with her on the subject, and 
to tell her from him, ** as a good and true brother, 
who really wishes her well, both on account of our 
relationship and because I wish to see her firmly 
established on the throne, that I warn her to ponder 
deeply the evils which may result to England, par- 
ticularly so early in her reign, from any change in 
religion. . . . You will enforce this by all the good 
arguments and persuasions that you can employ, . . . 
but if you can obtain no success in that way you will 
consider whether it will be well to press the Queen by 
saying that if this change is made, all idea of my 
marriage with her must be broken off. If she has any 
thoughts that way this may be effective." 2 

Feria was in a quandary, for he knew how impossible 
it was, seeing Elizabeth's temper, to deal with her in 
this way. After two or three inconclusive interviews 
with the Queen, in which the question of the religious 
changes was pressed and the marriage broadly hinted 
at, Feria came to close quarters with her. She began 
with her usual professions of disinclination to marry 
at all, and was proceeding, as he feared, to decline 
her brother-in-law's proposal, when the ambassador 

^ The English correspondence on this matter is of much 
interest. It is in Forbes's State Papers. 

= PhiHp to Feria, 14th February, 1559. — Spanish Calendars of 
Elizabeth (Hume). 




QUEEN ELIZABETH 

FROM A PAINTING BY ZUCCHEKO IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 



ELIZABETH AND FERIA 193 

stopped her and said he did not want an answer then. 
After some coquettish verbal fencing she promised him 
that she would give him a good answer if she gave 
him one at all. And then came the serious part of the 
business. Howard had written to her that Alba had 
said that they (the Spaniards) could not stand out for 
Calais any longer, but must make peace in any case. ^ 

Elizabeth worked herself up into a rage about this, 
and began to storm about Mary of Scotland's claims 
upon England. She was not so poor that she could 
not get what money and soldiers she needed to hold 
her own, she said. Her people were all grumbling, 
she declared, at the waste of money upon the fleet for 
Philip's service and other heavy expenditure the late 
Queen had incurred for him ; and Feria had much ado 
to enforce his view that England owed a deep debt 
of gratitude to Philip, and the unreasonableness of 
expecting that he would keep at war with France for 
the sake of a single town like Calais. He was afraid 
even to speak about the religious point for fear of 
exacerbating their relations : " Yet, although I plainly 
see her going to perdition, it seems to me that if the 
marriage can be carried through, the rest will soon be 
arranged in accordance with the glory of God and the 
wishes of your Majesty. If the marriage do not take 
place, all I could say to the Queen about religion would 
be of little avail, as she is so badly advised by the 

^ Elizabeth was all the time in negotiation with the Reform 
party in France through Guido Cavalcanti for a separate peace, 
if possible, on better terms than could be got in conjunction 
with Spain. She was quite willing to leave Philip in the lurch, 
if necessary, though the Catholic advisers of Henry II. had 
entirely different views. The correspondence is in Forbes' 
State Papers of Elizabeth. 



194 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

heretics who surround her, and it might even prejudice 
theprincipal matter" {i.e., the marriage). 

Events thereafter moved apace. To the Queen's 
indignation she was forced to consent to a peace with 
France, postponing the restitution of Calais for eight 
years, to be followed by a peace with Scotland. The 
Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity were 
passed ; and every day, notwithstanding Elizabeth's 
diplomatic professions of attachment to Spain and its 
King, the hold of the latter over England became 
less powerful. Philip had to make up his mind rapidly 
after the religious changes in the English Parliament 
had been made. It was clear to him then that Eliza- 
beth would be no fit instrument to his ends. Feria 
was telling him hotly that "the only way to deal with 
these heretics is sword in hand," and Alba, in 
Flanders, was for coercing Elizabeth before she grew 
strong enough to resist Spain and the English Catholics 
combined. 

But Philip hated war, and had a supreme belief in 
his own diplomatic methods. He was face to face, 
moreover, with a new development. Always before 
France had been the insatiable rival of his house, and 
France had been a solid instrument in the hands of its 
King. But the Reformation was already confusing 
the traditional boundaries. Henry II. was growing 
apprehensive of the increasing spread of Calvinism in 
his own dominions, and a solution after Philip's own 
heart was devised by the Churchmen that drew the 
Catholic rivals together to face the new danger of 
Protestantism throughout Europe. England was no 
longer to be the balancing power between them, but 
the enemy of both, so long as she remained Protestant. 
To cement this hopeful attempt to combine Europe 



A NEW SITUATION 195 

politically on new lines Philip was to marry the eldest 
daughter of France, the Princess Elizabeth of Valois, 
who, so long as he had hopes of marrying Elizabeth, 
had been destined for his only son Don Carlos. 

The close union of France and Spain caused, as 
usual, a wave of alarm to pass over England. Paget 
and the Spanish party in Elizabeth's Court were for 
continuing the war against France at any cost and 
clinging to Philip as the sole chance of safety ^ ; and, 
although the Queen and Cecil would not go so far as 
that, they did their best to mollify Feria and his 
master. When the ambassador saw the Queen on 
the 7th April, 1559 (the day that the news of the sign- 
ing of the peace of Cateau Cambresis came to London) 
she was pouting and coquettishly aggrieved that Philip 
should have engaged himself to be married to any one 
but her, as she had given him no answer yet. Feria 
retorted crossly that the King could not wait four 
months for her answer, and when Cecil told him that 
they were quite willing to continue the war against 
France if Philip liked, the ambassador answered him 
rudely, and " I left them that day as bitter as gall." 
Again and again the angry ambassador complained 
and remonstrated with the Queen about the religious 
changes and the licence now taken by the people. 
But she outwitted him at every point, kept up an 
elaborate pretence of negotiations to marry one of the 
Austrian Archdukes, who would depend entirely on 
Philip, and personally assured Feria that she was as 
good a Catholic as her father, the only point upon 
which she differed from the Spaniards being the 
supremacy of the Pope. 

Thus England freed herself from Spanish tutelage 
^ Hatfield Papers, part i. p. 151. 



196 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

within six months of Elizabeth's accession. Feria 
said she " was a daughter of the devil and her chief 
ministers the greatest scoundrels and heretics in the 
land," and when he went back to join his master in 
Flanders he breathed fire and slaughter against 
England and the Queen, whose diplomacy had stultified 
all his efforts. He had done his best to persuade 
Philip to pluck a quarrel with England that should 
give him an excuse for armed intervention, the deposi- 
tion of Elizabeth by the Pope, and the patronage of 
Catharine Grey as a pretender for Elizabeth's throne 
with the aid of the English Catholics, who, he assured 
Philip, were all in his favour. ^ But Philip thought that 
he had found a better way than by war and rejected 
the advice of his fiery councillors. To represent him 
in England there remained at Elizabeth's Court the 
best possible instrument that could have been selected 
in the circumstances, the Bishop of Aquila, Alvaro de 
la Quadra, a supple, patient, unscrupulous old ecclesi- 
astic, who had lived long in Italy and was an adept at 
sly, stealthy diplomacy, which so cleverly used religion 
as the stalking-horse of politics. Bishop Jewel calls 
him "a clever, crafty, old fox " ; and he needed all his 
cunning, for his task for the next five years until it 
broke his heart was to keep Elizabeth, heretic though 
she might be, from joining either the Protestants or 
the French against Philip. 

For even before the ink was dry that ratified the 
peace of Cateau Cambresis, before the pompous 
ceremonies in England, France, and Spain that cele- 
brated it were finished, a stroke of Fate had rendered 
the union between the two great Catholic Powers 
unstable, and old political traditions were reasserting 
* Spanish Calendar of Elizabeth (Hume). 



A STROKE OF FATE 197 

themselves. I have told elsewhere ^ of the ill-fated 
feast in Paris, when stern Alba wedded in June, 1559, 
as proxy for his master, the beautiful Valois Princess 
of fourteen. How her father, the gallant Henry, was 
stricken down mortally at the joust that followed, and 
how the rise of his long-neglected wife, Catharine de 
Medici, able and ambitious, soon made the Catholic 
League a hollow pretence. She needed not the domi- 
nance of the Guises and their Catholic friends, but so 
nicely to balance them against the Huguenots that she 
herself might hold the scale. She did not send her 
sweet daughter to Spain as a pledge for the extirpation 
of Protestantism root and branch, as had been 
intended, but to cajole Philip into helping her person- 
ally to hold her own as ruler of France, whichever 
faction was paramount, and to win, if possible, the heir 
of Spain for her younger daughter, so that her hold 
over the country might be perpetuated. 

The accession also of young Francis H. and Mary 
Stuart to the throne of France, under the dominion of 
their ambitious Guise uncles, had driven a great wedge 
into the unity of the Catholic League. The Guises, 
who led the Catholic party in France, were now for a 
short time masters, on behalf of the young King and 
his wife, of the national resources, and were prepared 
to use them in furthering their Scottish niece's claims 
to the English throne. This naturally drew Philip 
more to the side of Elizabeth, however perverse she 
might be, and, from the very first, rendered abortive 
the Catholic League secretly cemented by the treaty of 
Cateau Cambresis. When the death of Francis II., 
after his short reign, threw the Guises into the back- 
ground and made Catharine de Medici Regent of 
* " Queens of Old Spain," by Martin Hume. 



198 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

France, matters were hardly improved. Philip was 
always a bad hand at playing another's game, and 
though his young French wife lived happily with him, 
for he was a good husband, the purpose of her going 
to Spain was never achieved, and Philip was as 
anxious after his French marriage as before it to 
prevent his mother-in-law and his English sister-in- 
law from making common cause against him. They, 
knowing this as well as he, could, and did, always 
checkmate or paralyse him when they pleased by 
simulating friendship with each other, either by 
marriage talk or by a pretence of common interest. 
Whilst Catharine de Medici lived this was the 
problem of Europe, and to Philip it proved* an in- 
soluble one. 

Feria and Alba were for ever advocating the high 
hand with Elizabeth, but Philip knew that his hollow 
union with France had drawn all Protestants together, 
so that if he aided the English Catholics to depose 
Elizabeth and crush Protestantism in her country, not 
only would Catholic France be against him, but the 
Lutheran Germans would be disturbed, and perhaps 
he might let loose the storm, of which the mutterings 
were already audible, over his own Netherlands. So, 
in spite of the Bishop of Aquila's soft hints and 
Feria's warlike advice, Philip decided, notwithstand- 
ing Elizabeth's religious recalcitrancy, upon a policy of 
palliation and suavity in England. "You must," he 
instructed his ambassador, " keep mainly in view by 
all means to avoid a rupture. I have already pointed 
out the importance of this, but it is so great that I 
cannot be satisfied without repeating it many times." 
But yet he was ready even thus early if Elizabeth's 
subjects attacked her for her religious measures to 



PHILIP TRIES SUAVITY 199 

take full advantage of the opportunity for his own 
advantage, and so to prevent the French from estab- 
lishing themselves in England. With these pacific 
instructions, therefore, he sent the great sum of 
60,000 crowns " to gain friends," and says, " I have 
also ordered, in case of need, that money shall be 
raised to fit out a fleet at short notice, so that it 
may be ready to carry men over to England if 
required." 

The difference between Feria's arrogant methods 
and the Bishop's blandness was soon seen in his inter- 
course with the Queen. Of her and her advisers in his 
letters to Philip he has nothing but violent abuse ; but 
he was all tolerant kindness when he was with her, 
and got quite friendly with the " heretic " Cecil. He 
was lodged in Durham Place, as Feria had been, and 
was in close touch with Lady Mary Sidney and her 
brother, Lord Robert Dudley, who was soon to be 
created Earl of Leicester. During all the comedy of 
pretended marriage negotiations with the Archduke 
Charles the Bishop dexterously aided or hindered the 
progress as the interests of Philip seemed to dictate. 
If the Archduke was to come as a thoroughgoing 
Catholic and obedient servant of Spain well and good, 
but the moment there was any talk of his making 
religious concessions or appearing under Lutheran 
auspices, then the wily Bishop smiled upon the 
perennial second string of Lord Robert Dudley. In 
the meanwhile he was hand in glove with the dis- 
contented and dismayed English Catholics, gaining 
friends amongst them by money promises and blandish- 
ments, whilst his spies were busy discovering the 
weak points on the East Coast towards Flanders, 
making lists of the Catholic and disaffected English 



200 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

gentry, and whispering to them of the armed aid that 
in case of need would be sent by the CathoHc King. 
To Philip the Bishop wrote often with affected 
humility, but with studied significance, saying how 
surprised the English Catholics were that he made no 
move to help them. " Your Majesty," he wrote, " is 
the only hope of the godly and the dread of the wicked, 
if the latter are not to be allowed time to combat and 
weaken the Catholic party." ^ 

But Philip was powerless to stir a finger to help 
them, much as they might cry to him. The death of 
Henry II. and the accession of Mary Stuart's husband, 
as has been pointed out, had suddenly changed the 
situation. The claims of the Queen of Scots to the 
English throne, and the despatch of a strong French 
force to Leith to succour the Regent Mary of Lorraine, 
hardly pressed as she was by the rebels subsidised by 
Elizabeth, precipitated the eventuality that Philip 
dreaded most — a war in Scotland between France and 
the Queen of England. If in such a war the latter 
were beaten by the Guises, then farewell to Spanish 
influence in England, however Catholic the country 
might become. Yet Philip dared not fight on the 
behalf of heresy against the Catholic French element 
and the Guises, or the Huguenots would become all- 
powerful ; whilst if he interfered in England at all to 
Elizabeth's detriment his action would draw together 
in close unity the powerful Protestant party in 
England, the majority of the Scots who were 
Reformers, the Huguenots of France, who were 
panting for revenge on the Guises, and the Lutherans 
of Germany and Holland. With such a combination 

^ 12th July, Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 



PHILIP'S DIFFICULTIES 201 

as this behind her Elizabeth might adopt a stronger 
anti-CathoHc attitude than ever. 

But what Philip dreaded even more than this was 
the encouragement that such a strong combination of 
Protestants would give to the Flemings, who were 
already straining in the leash to escape from the 
Spanish religious system. Philip sent envoys to 
England and France to urge, both by persuasion and 
threats, that the peace should be kept (March, 1560), 
but, as usual, his step was too late to prevent hostili- 
ties. The Bishop of Aquila, in his private letters to 
Feria, was scornful of his master's methods. "If 
these envoys from his Majesty are only coming to talk, 
they will do m,ore harm than good, as the Catholics 
here expect much more than that. . . . The Queen is 
greatly alarmed, and this is the time to do what ought 
to have been done before ; but if we are always to be 
on the defensive and to palliate everything, I can only 
pray for patience, though I well know we shall never 
have such an opportunity again. All here are with us, 
and the very heretics are sick of it." ^ The Bishop 
dared not write in this strain to Philip, though he said 
as much as he could ; but the King saw, if his advisers 
did not, that he could not take up arms against 
Elizabeth without playing the French game, and it 
was equally impossible for him to fight his Catholic 
French allies on behalf of the heretic Queen. All he 
could do, therefore, was talk. 

The result of the short war in Scotland was favour- 
able to Elizabeth, and the pressing danger passed ; 
but Philip's threat to aid the French if she insisted 
upon continuing the hostilities brought home to 

^ The Bishop of Aquila to Feria, 7th March, 1560. — Spanish 
Calendar, vol, i. 



202 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Elizabeth and her minister that the Catholic League 
was still a danger to them. An attempt was made to 
persuade the Spaniards that the Queen would really 
marry the Archduke at once and follow Philip's 
advice, the object being to weaken the friendship 
between Spain and France ; but Lord Robert 
Dudley's philandering was now so open, and Elizabeth 
so obviously fond of him, that the new pretence about 
the Archduke and her sudden Catholic professions 
deceived nobody.^ Even Cecil lost heart at the 
difficulties created by this infatuation of the Queen for 
Dudley, and the Spanish ambassador chuckled with 
delight that the " heretics " were falling out amongst 
themselves and the Catholic cause was looking 
brighter. 

As soon as the death of Dudley's wife set him free 
he made an attempt, which for a time hoodwinked 
Bishop Quadra, to gain the support of Spain for his 
suit, and even wily Philip believed that England was 
going to fall under his sway again by means of the 
Queen's lover, a belief that proved that he still failed 
to gauge Elizabeth's true. character. The intermediary 
in this case was Sir Henry Sidney, who, being a 
kinsman of the English Countess of Feria and the 
husband of Robert Dudley's sister, was persona grata 
2X Durham House. He came to Bishop Quadra late 
in January, 1561, and after much circumlocution 
remarked that he was surprised that it had not been 
suggested to Philip that the opportunity offered " for 
gaining over Lord Robert by extending a hand to 
him now in the matter of his marriage with the 

^ This pretended rapprochement may be followed in detail in 
Quadra's letters in the Spanish Calendar. The intrigue was 
mainly engineered by Lady Mary Sidney. 



DUDLEY AND THE SPANIARDS 203 

Queen, and he would thereafter serve and obey your 
Majesty like one of your own vassals." The Bishop 
was cool about it, for Dudley's character was bad, and 
many evil tales were afloat about his wife's recent 
death. The King of Spain, said the Bishop, had no 
need to win the Queen of England's goodwill. She 
had not, moreover, shown herself very ready hitherto 
to take his advice upon anything, and it was not sure 
that she would do so in the matter of her marriage 
with Lord Robert. Sidney admitted that the rumours 
about the foul play upon Amy Robsart were generally 
believed, but he said they were untrue. The Queen, 
however, was really in love with Robert, and was 
most anxious to settle the religious question by the 
help of him as her husband. Yes, said the Bishop, 
that no doubt is very praiseworthy and necessary ; 
but he did not see why the religious matter should be 
mixed up with so mundane a business as marrying 
Dudley. It ought to be undertaken whether the 
Queen was married or single. vSidney quite agreed. 
Matters in the country were in a bad way, he admitted, 
but the Queen and Robert were anxious to put things 
right, and he swore most solemnly that they intended 
to restore the Catholic religion in England by means 
of a General Council of the Church, in which England 
would join if King Philip would patronise the bride- 
groom and urge Elizabeth to marry him. The Bishop 
reminded Sidney that he had been led astray several 
times before by such talk when the Queen wanted for 
her own ends to appear friendly to Spain. It was, 
moreover, very improper to make religion the excuse. 
If Lord Robert repented of his heresy and wanted to 
recant there was nothing to prevent him from doing so 
without bargaining about it, and the interview ended 



204 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

by Sidney's promising to bring Lord Robert himself 
to Durham House to satisfy the Bishop of his bond 
/ides. 

In his letter to the King the Churchman expresses 
himself as being much shocked at the barefacedness 
of the proposal ; but he goes on to say that he believes 
that it is only by this means that the Queen can be 
brought round to the Spanish side. The gossip 
about her and Dudley, he says, is so scandalous that 
she will not dare to marry him without some strong 
support ; and there was no price she would not pay to 
obtain it. Such a tendency as that shown in Sidney's 
proposal would, of course, be strenuously opposed by 
most of Elizabeth's advisers ; and Paget, with Cecil 
and his friends, attempted a diversion by strongly advo- 
cating a close alliance with France, where the young 
King Francis II. had recently died, and Catharine de 
Medici had become supreme. The Dudley intrigue 
with Spain, however, went on, though probably, as we 
see now, without the full knowledge of the Queen. 
Lord Robert at length came with Sidney to see the 
Bishop on the 1 3th February, and professed his readi- 
ness to be the humble servant of King Philip if he 
would recommend the Queen to marry him. Quadra 
was cautious. He had no special instructions, he 
said, and the King was now in Spain, a long way off; 
but he would promise Dudley that he would, the next 
time he saw the Queen, urge her to marry ; and if she 
mentioned any particular person he (the Bishop) would 
enlarge upon Lord Robert's good qualities and King 
Philip's affection for him. 

Two days later the smooth-tongued old Bishop 
found himself alone with the Queen, and ventured to 
say how glad he was to hear that her marriage was 



DUDLEY AND THE SPANIARDS 205 

seriously under discussion at last. If she wished to 
consult the King of Spain on the matter the Bishop 
was very much at her service, though no instructions 
from Spain had been sent to him. The Queen talked 
wide of the subject for some time ; but she said at 
last that she knew she was no angel, and would make 
the Bishop her confessor. She would not deny that 
she had some affection for Lord Robert for his good 
qualities, but had not decided to marry him or any one 
else. But she saw every day the necessity for her 
marriage, and that to satisfy the English humour it was 
desirable that she should marry an Englishman. What 
would the King of Spain think, she asked, if she 
married one of her servants ? The Bishop said he did 
not know, but would ask if she directed him to do so ; 
and then he launched out into warm praise of Dudley. 
Elizabeth promised to do nothing without Philip's 
advice, and told the Bishop that when the time came 
she would speak to him on the subject. The Bishop, 
in relating the interview, says that he humoured her 
thus " because he saw the heretics so busy forming 
combinations with England, France, Scotland, and 
Germany, and, above all, because your Majesty's 
neighbouring States are so pressed that a perverse 
decision of this woman might prejudice them, though 
she herself were ruined by it." ^ 

The Bishop, for all his sanctimonious horror that 
religion should be used in political bargaining, was 
really quite willing to carry through the deal and 
to patronise the marriage of Elizabeth and Dudley 
if he were assured of the payment. That Dudley 
was ready to promise anything and everything is also 
certain, but it is more than doubtful whether Elizabeth 
* Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 



2o6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

was aware of what he was promising. It suited her 
at the moment to meet the Catholic league between 
France and Spain, hollow as it was, by threatening 
combinations of Protestants ; whilst at the same time, 
as a second string to her bow, cajoling the Spaniards 
into the idea that she was willing to be reconciled to 
them, and had Catholic leanings. When Bishop 
Quadra saw Dudley the next day Lord Robert was 
profuse in his thanks, for he knew from the Queen 
word for word what had passed. It had only been 
timidity that had prevented the Queen from deciding 
on the spot, he said, and he begged the Bishop to 
revert to the subject when he saw her again. His 
promises knew no bounds. Everything in England, 
even religion, he said, should be put into the hands of 
King Philip ; and if the sending of a representative to 
the Council of the Church were not enough he would 
go himself. To this the Bishop replied that he would 
do his best to forward matters, but again, in shocked 
tones, he begged Lord Robert not to mention religion 
in the matter on any account. What the Queen and 
Dudley did about that concerned their own consciences. 
Of course the Catholic King would be delighted to see 
all these religious dissensions settled, but it should not 
be a matter of bargain. '* I am thus cautious with 
these people, because if they are playing false, which 
is quite possible, I do not wish to give them the oppor- 
tunity of saying that we offered them your Majesty's 
favour in return for their changing their religion." 

At the same time the Bishop urged upon his master 
that the moment had now come for action : either this 
bargain must be struck with Dudley, or help must be 
given to the enemies of the existing regime to revolu- 
tionise England. " To let these affairs drift at the 



DUDLEY AND THE SPANIARDS 207 

mercy of chance neither secures England to us nor 
punishes evil, and must end in disadvantage to your 
Majesty." Philip was just as sanctimonious in pro- 
fession and as pliable in practice as his ambassador. 
" Our principal aim," he wrote in reply, "is directed 
to the service of our Lord, the maintenance of religion, 
and the settlement and pacification of England, and, 
as we see that Sidney's proposals tend to this, and 
further bearing in mind that God if He wills can 
extract good from evil, we have decided that the 
negotiation suggested by Sidney should be listened 
to." Dudley was to be helped to marry the Queen, 
but "the bargain and its payment must be clearly set 
forth in writing signed by Elizabeth herself, and she 
must give some earnest of her sincerity by liberating 
the Catholics she has in prison, she must undertake 
to send Catholic bishops and ambassadors to the 
Council of the Church, and submit herself uncon- 
ditionally to its decisions. And, besides all this, she 
must begin by giving full toleration to Catholic 
worship." 

This, again, shows that Philip was utterly at sea as 
regards the real condition of England at the time, and 
was still ignorant of Elizabeth's character and position. 
Such demands as those he formulated as a preliminary 
were utterly out of the question, even as a final con- 
cession. Before this letter was received in London 
the insincerity of Elizabeth in the matter began to 
appear. The Earl of Bedford was sent to France, 
ostensibly to condole with Catharine for the death of 
Francis II. ; but also to suggest that the French 
bishops — and especially those of Huguenot leaning — 
should join her in sending representatives to the 
Council, but not at Trent, as had been agreed, but 



2o8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

somewhere else on this side of the Alps. The clever- 
ness of this move is apparent. Catharine and Elizabeth 
would in such case seem to be making common cause, 
which would paralyse Philip ; and at the same time 
the Catholics in England would be tranquillised with 
the idea that a Council of the Church would settle 
matters to their liking. Catharine, however, did not 
jump at the bait, as just then in the first days of her 
Regency she did not wish to quarrel with her Spanish 
son-in-law, or to drive the Catholic Guises to despera- 
tion by seeming to join with Elizabeth against them. 

As soon as this became evident the English Queen 
grew cool about the Council, much to Dudley's annoy- 
ance, who still tried to keep her up to the mark. She 
sent Cecil to the Spanish Bishop, asking him to move 
Philip to write to her recommending her to marry 
an Englishman, hinting at the same time that this 
was in Philip's interest, as she might otherwise marry 
a foreign enemy of his. Cecil said that her idea was 
to bring Philip's letter before a committee of peers, 
prelates, and commoners, all friends of Dudley, and 
they would recommend the marriage. This was all very 
well, said the Bishop, but how about Lord Robert's 
religious pledges? But Cecil had no intention, nor 
probably had the Queen, of carrying out any such 
promises ; and this new proposal was really intended 
to upset Dudley's plan. So, gradually, a barrier of 
limitations and conditions was introduced by Cecil, 
which made the affair impossible. The Anglican and 
Lutheran bishops were to sit in the Council ; certain 
points of doctrine must be settled beforehand ; the 
Pope or his legate might be President but not ruler of 
the Council ; and the place of meeting must be mutually 
agreed upon by all the princes. Dudley alternately 




ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER 

FROM A PAINTING AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 



CECIL FRUSTRATES DUDLEY 209 

fumed and sulked at this diversion by his opponents, 
and tried desperately to keep the Spanish Bishop in 
hand. It had, of course, been evident to the latter at 
once that Philip's attitude as shown in his instructions 
was impossible." ''Elizabeth," he said, "had not 
entered into the business so humbly and submissively 
that he could lay down the law to her and insist upon 
her pledging herself in writing " ; besides, it would be 
most unwise to give the "heretics " the opportunity, if 
they were playing false, of proving that they had got 
Philip to bargain for his political help in return for 
religious concessions. 

In the meanwhile, encouraged by this philandering, 
a Papal Nuncio was hurrying across Europe to be 
ready at a moment's notice to sail from Flanders to 
England and invite the representatives of Elizabeth 
to the Council of Trent. This Nuncio, the Abbe 
Martinengo, was to be received at Greenwich 
privately, and not to go through the streets of London, 
which it was thought would not be safe. Dudley was 
again in the seventh heaven of blissful anticipation, 
and ready, if he was the Queen's husband, to lay Eng- 
land and the faith he had professed at Philip's feet. 
He would restore the Catholic Church, he promised, 
the Queen should give a good answer to the Nuncio 
about the Council of the Church, and some of the Pro- 
testant bishops even, he said, were beginning to waver. 
But Cecil saw which way matters were tending, and 
promptly stepped in with another diversion. Protestant 
feeling in England was already becoming excited at 
the rumour that a Papal Nuncio was on his way to see 
the Queen, and Bishop Quadra found himself a prey 
to intense unpopularity for having, it was said, plotted to 
bring about a Catholic revolution. The Nuncio was 



2IO TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

informed that he would not be allowed to land in 
England (April, 1561), Sidney was hurried off to his 
post in Wales, Dudley retired before the storm, and 
Cecil, triumphant, had the satisfaction of knowing that 
he had prevented England from being dragged into 
Philip's clutches again by the ambition of a worthless 
courtier, aided by the Queen's momentary weakness. 

Bishop Quadra was deeply mortified by the way in 
which he had been misled, and became more desirous 
than ever that strong measures should be taken to aid 
the Catholics to rebel against Elizabeth. After un- 
successfully approaching the French Huguenots to 
obtain help from them for his marriage with the 
Queen, Dudley had the impudence, in January, 1562, to 
approach Quadra again and offer his servile obedience 
to Spain in return for the aid of King Philip towards 
his marriage ; but the bait was stale, for, as the Bishop 
wrote, the Catholics thoroughly distrusted Dudley 
now, and he was of no use any longer as a Spanish 
instrument. 

Though Philip had failed again to secure England 
as a satellite, the need for his doing so was as urgent as 
ever, for the Netherlands were seething in discontent, 
the Huguenots in France were being supported for 
the time by the Regent Catharine, and it looked as if 
the stronger coming combination in Europe would not 
be Catholic but Protestant. To counteract this threat- 
ening state of affairs it was necessary for Philip to try 
a new tack. The massacre of Vassy had precipitated 
the opening of the first war of religion in France 
(March, 1562), and this made it expedient for him to 
strengthen the Guises. So a proposal, upon which, 
when Cardinal Lorraine had made it a year before, 
he had looked upon coldly, was now regarded with 



PHILIP AND MARY STUART 211 

favour. This was no less than the marriage of the 
widowed Mary Stuart, now in Scotland, and on ill 
terms with Catharine, with Philip's heir, Don Carlos. 
It was not such a match as the Spanish King in 
ordinary circumstances would have considered adequate 
for his son ; but as Mary was the Catholic heiress of 
England, and might by a turn of the wheel become 
Queen of Britain she was a useful countercheck to 
Protestant combinations. 

As soon as the project got wind Elizabeth, Catharine 
de Medici, and the Scottish Protestants, led by the 
Earl of Murray, sought an antidote to the threatened 
evil. The Darnley match was positively patronised 
both by Elizabeth and Catharine, and Lethington 
posted off to London eager to negotiate a friendly 
understanding between England and Scotland before 
his Catholic mistress should fall into the marriage 
net of Spain. But the war between Catholics and 
Protestants in France was now blazing fiercely, and 
the Guises were fighting for their lives, unable to help 
their niece or interfere in any way with Elizabeth's 
game in Scotland. This made her for the time the 
mistress of the situation, and she could afford to deal 
high-handedly with the Queen of Scots, especially after 
the Duke of Guise himself had been assassinated before 
Orleans (February, 1563). She threw all her power 
on the Huguenot side in the struggle, allowing English 
contingents to join in the fight and subsiding Conde 
with money. Mary Stuart's Protestant advisers had 
tried hard to neg-otiate an alliance between England 
and Scotland on Protestant lines in conjunction with 
the recognition of Mary as Elizabeth's heiress under 
the same auspices ; and once more Lethington went 
to London, in February, 1563, to urge his point. He 



212 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

found the Queen coolly evasive, for she had nothing 
to fear from Mary or her French kinsmen now, and 
she knew that Philip would not dare to attack her or 
interfere forcibly in Scotland whilst the Protestants in 
France were in the ascendant. 

Lethington, of course with Mary's acquiescence, 
then shifted his ground. He and Murray had always 
been strong partisans of England, with the idea of 
securing the succession to Mary of a Protestant 
Britain ; but, out of patience at last with this new 
rebuff from Elizabeth, they determined to throw over 
England and Protestantism, and marry Mary to a 
nominee of Philip and defy Elizabeth to do her worst. 
So, at dead of night, again and again, Lethington, the 
Scottish minister, landed from his boat at the dark 
stairs of Durham House, and remained for hours 
closeted with Bishop Quadra. The Bishop himself 
was daily growing more bitter against Elizabeth. 
She had now openly aided the French Protestants 
against the Catholics. She had treated him per- 
sonally with marked contumely, raiding his house on 
the pretext that people other than his own servants 
attended Mass there, for she knew she could do all 
this now with impunity, because Philip could not afford 
to quarrel with her whilst the Catholics in France 
were in a bad way. So the Bishop listened eagerly 
as the Scot told him how the Queen of England 
had deceived his mistress, and now again had evaded 
the question of her succession ; how she had artfully 
stepped in by intrigue, and had rendered abortive 
all the negotiations for the marriage of Mary with 
a fitting foreign prince, and had tried to drive her into 
some unworthy marriage. " Had she not better accept 
any marriage that the Queen of England proposes 



PHILIP AND MARY STUART 213 

for her?" asked Quadra, as a feeler, "if in return 
she obtains her recognition as the heiress of the 
EngHsh Crown ? " No, replied Lethington, emphati- 
cally. They had made up their mind that the only 
way was to force Elizabeth, by marrying Mary to a 
powerful Catholic prince, with sufficient force behind 
him to maintain the rights of the Queen of Scots. 
And then, after a little fencing on both sides, he 
proposed that Don Carlos should become King 
Consort of Scotland, and afterwards of Great Britain, 
with Mary for his wife. Mary was, he said, quite 
resolved never to marry a Protestant or to accept 
any husband on the bidding of the Queen of Eng- 
land, and if her approaches to Spain were not well 
received she would offer to marry her young brother- 
in-law, Charles IX. 

This latter declaration, we may well suppose, 
was only for the purpose of forcing the hand of 
Philip, for the match would certainly not have been 
allowed by Catharine de Medici. The old Bishop, 
aware of this, passed it over with a smile, and 
said that there was nothing the Queen of England 
dreaded more than a marriage between Mary Stuart 
and a friend of Spain. She had been at infinite pains 
lately to make them believe that she was a Catholic, 
but now that her friends the Huguenots were in the 
ascendant she had become less anxious to conciliate 
them. But were not the Scots Protestants too? he 
asked. Lethington, Protestant and friend of Knox 
though he was, minimised the difference between the 
creed of Scotland and Spain. Religion, he assured the 
Spaniard, was not really at the bottom of their trouble 
in Scotland. Both Elizabeth and Catharine, he said, 
were in mortal fear of the marriage of Don Carlos and 



214 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Mary of Scotland, as well they might be ; for not only 
would the Prince thus win the most chaste and beau- 
tiful bride in the world, "but he would also succeed to 
almost universal monarchy by adding to the dominions 
already possessed by your Majesty two entire islands, 
this and Ireland, the possession of which would give 
no trouble whatever, having regard to the attachment 
which the Catholics bear to this marriage and the 
union of England and Scotland. 

Bishop Quadra, well aware of the vast importance 
of such a declaration from one of the leaders of the 
Scottish Protestants, tried to extract precise religious 
pledges from him. But Lethington had said all he 
wished to say in the four hours' conference, and the 
Bishop, full of encouragement, promised to obtain 
promptly the King's answer to the proposal. Lething- 
ton's next move was to approach the discontented 
English Catholic nobles, already in a ferment at 
Dudley's insolence and Cecil's religious policy. 
Almost to a man they assured the Scot of their 
enthusiastic support of a Spanish marriage for Mary 
and the acceptance of the revolutionary changes that 
such a marriage would produce in England. "Only 
let her marry the heir of Spain and we will salute 
her as our leader," they said. This could only mean 
that with Spanish aid Mary and Carlos were to be 
placed upon the throne of a united Britain, and that 
Philip would regain the paramountcy he had lost. 
Elizabeth's spies soon got wind of all this, and her 
counter move was a most extraordinary one — no 
other, indeed, than to offer Dudley as Mary's husband, 
with the assurance of her succession to the English 
Crown after Elizabeth's death without issue. It was 
a mere feint and never meant seriously by Elizabeth, 



PHILIP AND MARY STUART 215 

but it divided Scottish opinion and unsettled poor 
Mary herself, and shows how much more than a 
match Elizabeth was for Philip in diplomacy. 

Whilst she, with consummate skill and daring, was 
ready with such a diversion as this, the Spanish 
King was pondering, considering, discussing, and 
receiving reports upon every phase of the Scottish 
offer. The opportunity was a supreme one for him, 
and if he had been prompt and bold to seize the chance 
he might have won England and Scotland by this 
means. It is true that Don Carlos was a weak, half- 
witted boy of degenerate type, though this was not 
generally known at the time, but it would have been 
sufficient to betroth him to Mary for his father to have 
chained a ri^hi to interfere in Scotland. The Catholics 
of England were on the alert for any such opportunity, 
and the Scots, as we have seen by Lethington's action, 
were ready to welcome any power strong enough 
to defend their country from the intrigues by which 
Elizabeth sought to sap the independence of their 
ancient realm. 

But promptitude was impossible where Philip was 
concerned. It took him three months to answer the 
important letter of Bishop Quadra telling him of 
Lethington's offer, and when the reply came to London, 
in June, 1 563, it was thoroughly characteristic of the 
writer. As usual, he wanted to pledge everybody else 
up to the hilt, whilst himself remaining free behind 
bland generalities. His greatest praise was for the 
Bishop's prudence in hearing what Lethington had said 
without giving him any plain answer. " And seeing 
that the bringing about of this marriage may perhaps 
be the beginning of a reformation in religious matters 
in England, I have decided to entertain the negotiation 



2i6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

You will have it conducted in the same way that it 
has been commenced if you consider that safe and 
secret, telling them [the Scots] to inform you of all 
the engagements and understandings they have in 
England ; and you, who know how valuable such 
knowledge will be to me, will keep me fully informed 
of everything. You will advise me step by step of 
all that happens, but without settling anything except 
to discover the particulars referred to above, until I 
send you instructions. You may tell them of my 
intentions, but urge them above all to use the utmost 
secrecy in the business and all connected with it, as 
all the benefit to be derived depends absolutely upon 
nothing being heard of it until it is an accomplished 
fact. If it becomes known that I am concerned in 
any such negotiations, the French will be greatly 
alarmed and will spare no efforts to frustrate them — 
or at least to counteract any profitable result that may 
arise. As for that Queen of England and her heretics, 
they are so deeply concerned that it is easy to judge 
what they would do if they heard of it ; so, as I say, 
it is absolutely necessary that you should keep secret 
and urge secrecy upon all persons with whom you 
treat." Philip knew that Cardinal Lorraine was now 
pressing his niece to marry the Archduke Charles, 
Elizabeth's former suitor; but Lethington had scouted 
him as being useless for their purpose, as being poor 
and powerless, and Philip was willing to cut out his 
own close kinsman if he could thus gain England and 
Scotland for his son, or rather for himself,' and above 

* Quadra wrote a letter to the Emperor on the 26th June, before 
he received PhiHp's instructions, worded in a way that was pur- 
posely intended to deceive. Whilst saying that the Scots were 
not favourable to the Archduke's suit unless he brought enough 



PHILIP AND MARY STUART 217 

all avoid another French domination of Scotland, 
which was threatened by Mary's pretended willingness 
to marry the King of France. 

When Philip's letter arrived in London the old 
Bishop was under a cloud. He was accused of hold- 
ing communication with Arthur Pole in the Tower. 
It was known that he had been receiving in Durham 
House emissaries of the Irish Catholics; and Cecil's 
spies reported that suspicious boats came often at 
night to the water gate. To make matters worse 
one day in May a hanger-on of the Bishop's house- 
hold, an Italian serving lad, had shot at from the back 
gate of Durham House a Huguenot captain who was 
swaggering down the Strand towards Whitehall. 
The would-be assassin had taken refuge in the house, 
and had sought sanctuary in the Bishop's own chamber, 
whence he was smuggled away by boat by the servants 
and escaped. Search and violation of diplomatic 
domicile by the officers of the law followed. The 
Bishop's servants were interrogated, the house itself 
placed in the custody of an officer of the Queen, and 
the old Bishop, with bitterness in his heart, found 
himself shunned by all and powerless.' 

money to keep himself and also that he was strong enough to 
assert Mary's claim to the English Crown, he hinted that it was 
to France and not to Spain that she was looking for a husband. 
No word is mentioned about Don Carlos. — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. i. 340. 

^ Serious allegations of intrigues against the Queen had been 
made against the Bishop by a former secretary of his to Cecil, 
Shan O'Neil was known to have frequented his house ; English 
Catholics were known to be attendants at Mass in the embassy 
chapel, and many other complaints were made besides the 
harbouring and connivance in the escape of the fugitive Italian. 
The Bishop himself was placed under arrest and subsequently 
deprived of the use of Durham House as a result of the investi- 



2i8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

So when Philip's impossible instructions reached the 
Bishop, affairs had changed. Lethington had been 
plainly told by Elizabeth that she was well aware 
that he was plotting to marry his mistress to Don 
Carlos or the Archduke, but that if she married 
either she must face her enmity, whereas if she 
married a friend of England she would make her 
the heir to her throne. Lethington and the Scots 
were therefore already wavering, for the fear was 
that if Mary wedded a Spanish nominee, Elizabeth 
would make Darnley her heir. The Catholics, too, 
not unnaturally, seeing the Countess of Lennox, 
Darnley 's mother, suddenly taken into high favour 
with Elizabeth, were thinking what an ideal arrange- 
ment it would be to marry Mary and her cousin 
Darnley with Elizabeth's blessing, and the assured 
joint succession to her crown. The Bishop knew all 
this, and had well nigh lost heart when Philip's letter 
arrived. He saw how impossible his master's methods 
were in the face of Elizabeth's rapid changes of policy 
and fertility of resource ; for how could he keep the 
English Catholics in hand and learn all their combina- 
tions, or even get them to make any, on vague secret 
encouragement which might mean nothing ? To the 
Duke of Alba he wrote : "The remedy is a weak one 
for so dangerous a malady. When they see that 
instead of giving them a firm reply we come only 
with halting proposals and inquiries, I know not 
what they will think. It is useless to ask them to 
give me information as to the amount of support the 
Queen of Scots can rely upon in England for the 
information of his Majesty. Lethington knows well 

gation of these charges. — Spanish Calendar, vol. i., and Domestic 
Calendar of the same date, 1563. 



PHILIP AND MARY STUART 219 

that all this has been done long ago, for, of course, 
I could not hide my communications from him. We 
have been approached by the same people about the 
marriage . . . and they have given to Lethington 
lists of the Catholics and others who would raise 
troops for the Queen of Scots." 

Almost hopeless of success, therefore, the Bishop 
sent one of his most confidental servants to Scotland 
to tell Mary verbally that the ambassador had a very 
important communication for her if she would send a 
trustworthy agent to London to receive it. This 
messenger, Luis de Paz, left London in the middle of 
July, 1563, and eventually reached Mary whilst she was 
travelling in the Western Highlands. She had been 
ardently expecting Philip's answer, and had with 
difficulty held off the other suitors, the Archduke 
Charles and Eric of Sweden, until it arrived. She 
gave to Quadra's messenger a favourable verbal reply, 
but before he reached Langley, in Buckinghamshire, 
where the Bishop was staying, the old Spanish Church- 
man was dying. He had plaintively written to Alba 
shortly before that it was impossible to conduct affairs 
in England on Philip's lines. He had done his best 
but had been beaten. The English scorned and con- 
temned him. He had been expelled from the Queen's 
house ; he saw his master's cause daily waning in 
England, and he knew that only bold, prompt action 
could regain the lost ground. The hopelessness of 
moving Philip to such action broke the old man's 
heart. Luis de Paz had just time to whisper Mary's 
message to him, and the dying man grieved sorely, 
he said, that he should thus drop just when he might 
hope to have succeeded. " I can do no more," he 
sighed, just before he passed away, and Spanish 



220 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

influence in England was cast further into the back- 
ground by his death ; for Durham Place during his 
residence there had been the secret trysting-place of 
all those who hated Elizabeth's rule. In the absence 
of any diplomatic channel through which Mary might 
work the orreat combination that she dreamed was to 
give her the crown of Britain under Philip's protec- 
tion, the clever, strong diplomacy of Elizabeth carried 
all before it. Dudley and Darnley were alternately 
dangled before Mary's eyes and then withdrawn, 
until at length came the Lennox coup dUtat and the 
marriage of the Queen of Scots with her cousin 
Darnley, which for a time took her out of the market. 
In the meanwhile every day that passed made it 
more difficult, and yet more necessary, for the King 
of Spain to gain the friendship or control of England. 
Affairs were going worse and worse with him in the 
Netherlands, where the struggle was assuming the 
character of a duel to the death between the old tradi- 
tions of Flemish self-government and the newer 
absolutism which had already been fixed upon Castile 
and now threatened the ancient patrimony of Bur- 
gundy under Philip. The Reformed religion, or, indeed, 
any assertion of the lay right of judgment in matters 
of faith, was to Philip the embodiment of a rebellious 
spirit against the absolute centralised authority which 
was the essence of his system of government, and as 
such had to be crushed at any cost or sacrifice. 
Almost openly the English Protestants were sym- 
pathising with their Flemish brethren, and many 
Protestant refugees were flocking into England to 
establish their industries and seek security under a 
Protestant Queen. Boldness and good fortune had 
enabled Elizabeth, on the other hand, to take advantage 



ELIZABETH'S GROWING POWER 221 

of the jealousy of her neighbours and to gather 
around her the growing Protestant party which wel- 
comed the national independence she had attained in 
so few years, whilst Philip's hesitancy had succeeded 
entirely in disheartening the English Catholics, who 
had at first looked upon him as their champion. 

The attitude of Elizabeth throughout her inter- 
course with the Spanish ambassadors had been such 
that she had been able to beguile them when it suited 
her, and to checkmate them at pleasure ; for whilst 
they had to wait for tardy instructions, which when 
they came always enjoined impracticable conditions, 
Elizabeth was opportunist and able to change her 
tack at an hour's notice, to the utter confusion of her 
slow antacronlst. The hard treatment of Catholics in 
Enofland and the welcome accorded to the Flemish 
Protestant refugees had been met by Philip by the 
cruel persecution in Spain of Englishmen, upon the 
barest suspicion of heterodoxy ; and this had been 
resented by the recrudescence of the pillage of Spanish 
and Flemish ships at sea by English rovers. Not 
content with this, Elizabeth attempted to foster the 
new Flemish industries in England by imposing re- 
strictions upon the entrance into her ports of certain 
manufactured goods coming from Flanders. In 
retaliation the Spanish rulers began a regular war of 
tariffs against England ; and this, by the middle of 
1564, had resulted in a general prohibition being 
issued on both sides, which practically forbade com- 
mercial intercourse altogether. Envoys went back- 
wards and forwards for months, trying unsuccessfully 
to arrange matters ; and in these efforts the Flemings 
were much more anxious than the English ; for the 
latter had secured a good inlet for their cloths to the 



222 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Continent through Embden, and Elizabeth had given 
permission for unrestricted export to all other countries 
but Flanders and Spain. 

The Flemish merchants, on the other hand, were 
almost bankrupt by the loss of the English trade, 
and were clamorous to Philip to remedy the matter. ^ 
Elizabeth could afford to stand firm and resist all 
attempts to force her into an inferior position in the 
negotiations. She had taken Philip's measure by this 
time, and knew that whilst his own Netherlands were 
seething in revolt, and the Catholic party in France 
were held in check by the Huguenots, he dared not 
seriously injure her. So at last it was not the Queen 
of England, but Philip, who had to speak humbly ; and 
in June, 1564, there arrived in London a Spanish 
ambassador of rank, a canon of Toledo, Diego 
Guzman de Silva, on a new errand. His instructions 
were precise, and his position was quite distinct from 
that formerly held by haughty Feria and of Bishop 
Quadra. They had both had for their mission the 
forcing of a policy upon a new unstable Queen, whilst 
Guzman was sent to seek a redress of grievances, and 
by diplomacy and moderation to compass what threats 
and retaliation had failed to accomplish. Philip's 
hands, indeed, were then too full of his own troubles, 
both in the Mediterranean and Flanders, for him to 
hope to rule other countries, and bitter as it must 
have been for him, and still more bitter for the states- 

^ And not alone to Philip. The merchants of Antwerp wrote 
beseeching letters to Cecil, and also to Gresham, asking for their 
influence to procure the re-establishment of commercial inter- 
course. The correspondence on the subject, extending over 
many months, is in the Spanish Calendar, vol. i., and in the 
Flanders Papers of the date (1564) at the Record Office, for 
the most part abstracted in the Foreign Calendar. 



A NEW AMBASSADOR 223 

men of the Alba school, he was forced to speak mildly 
through his new ambassador to the heretic Queen to 
prevent the ruin of his Catholic Flemish subjects. 
To this pass had he been brought in six years from 
the time when in the days of Mary he had worked his 
will in England almost unchecked. 

Guzman was instructed to make vigorous remon- 
strance to the English Government with regard to the 
grievances inflicted on Spanish and Flemish trade in 
many ways ; but he was warned that when he saw 
Queen Elizabeth he was " to compliment her with the 
fairest words you can use." " You will tell her, as I 
write to her, that I send you to reside near her as my 
ordinary ambassador, with orders to try to please her 
in all things, as, in effect, we wish you to do, using 
every possible effort to that end, and to strive to 
preserve her friendship towards us, ■ and our mutual 
alliance. You will assure her that nothing will be 
wanting on my part to this end, as she well knows by 
the acts we have hitherto done, and the offers we have 
made to her." The ambassador was instructed to 
win over Lord Robert Dudley, "who is so great a 
favourite of the Queen, and can influence her to the 
extent you have been informed. With kindness you 
will try to gain him, and will also strive to make the 
friendship of the Queen's Councillors and officers 
through whose hands affairs pass, so that you may 
the more readily guide them in the way desired." 
His mission was primarily concerned with securing 
the restoration of Flemish trade and the reopening 
of the ports on both sides, though he was also to 
watch closely the coming and going of "heretics" 
between England and the Netherlands, to persuade 
Elizabeth, if possible, to extend toleration to the 



224 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Catholic worship in England, ^ and he was to spy out 
the Spanish Protestants who had sought refuge there. 
But, although he said nothing to his new am- 
bassador, it is evident that Philip was not inclined 
to accept as permanent his present state of power- 
lessness in England, and was patiently biding his 
time until circumstances allowed him to obtain control 
once more. This is seen by the stress laid upon the 
importance of gaining Leicester to the Spanish cause, 
and still more by the instruction that Guzman was 
stealthily to encourage the hopes of the English 
Catholics, " with such dissimulation and dexterity as 
to give no cause for suspicion to the Queen or her 
advisers, as it is evident that much evil might follow 
if the contrarv were the case." Guzman was an 
amiable, easy-going Churchman in favour of peace, 
and very soon managed to get affairs upon a more 
friendly footing. The marriage juggle, by which Eliza- 
beth balanced her own supposed marriage against 
that of Mary Stuart ; the prospective bridegrooms, 
the Archduke Charles, Don Carlos, Don Juan of 
Austria, the boy King of France, with Leicester 
always in reserve, being often changed or trans- 
ferred from one Queen to the other, were looked 
upon by Guzman with somewhat scornful amuse- 
ment. He quite understood that these ever-varying 
phases of advance and recession obeyed the passing 
political need of Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici, 
and he was never greatly perturbed by them. 

^ Some of the arguments he is directed to use sound strangely 
incongruous as coming from Philip. " You may say that they 
cannot fairly refuse the request about the [Catholic] churches, 
for even the Turk allows Christians who live in his country to 
worship God in their own way." — Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 353. 



ELIZABETH AND GUZMAN 225 

Elizabeth was all g^raciousness when she received 
Guzman's first visit at Richmond on the 22nd June, 
1564. He had had no need to seek Dudley, who 
had begun to cultivate his friendship as soon as he 
arrived, for what purpose we shall see presently ; and 
the more to do him honour, on the arrival of the am- 
bassador at the palace landing-stage, young Darnley, 
of the blood royal, was awaiting him, to lead him to 
the Queen. She was standing, listening to a keyed 
instrument, when he entered the presence chamber, 
led by Lord Chamberlain Howard ; and as soon as 
she saw him she came forward and embraced him 
warmly. Speaking at first in Italian and later in 
Latin, she expressed her delight at his coming : "As 
there were some friendly countries trying to make 
her believe that your Majesty would never again 
have a representative here, and she was glad that 
they had turned out false prophets. She said I 
should be treated and considered commensurately 
with the deep interest which for many reasons she 
took in your Majesty's affairs." Then, as a diversion, 
she displayed much curiosity about the mental and 
physical qualities of young Don Carlos, and talked 
some prurient nonsense about Philip's widowed sister, 
J nana, whom she said she might marry, she (Eliza- 
beth) being the husband and Juana the wife. To 
impress the ambassador the more with her desire 
to be friendly, and to attract attention, as usual, to 
her own charms, she said that the King, her good 
brother, " had seen her when she was sorrowful, 
distressed, ill-treated, imprisoned, and afflicted, and 
that she had grown greatly since then, and even 
gave me to understand that she had greatly changed 
in appearance." She promised the ambassador a 

Q 



226 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

prompt settlement of all grievances, and affectionately 
embracing him again, handed the somewhat dazzled 
cleric over to the hospitable care of her courtiers. 
Dudley, Pembroke, Northampton, Clinton, Howard, 
and Cecil "came separately and embraced me, con- 
gratulating me on my arrival, and expressing their 
pleasure at my coming ; " and so. with much suave 
compliment, Guzman, surprised at the warmth of 
his reception, was conducted by Darnley to his 
baroe ag^ain. 

All this new-born delight in Spaniards on the part 
of Elizabeth and her courtiers was, of course, not 
without its reason. The fact is that, after all her 
aid to Conde and his Huguenots, peace had been 
made in France upon terms which gave predominance 
to the Catholics ; and she considered that Conde had 
betrayed her in this. as. indeed, he had. Cardinal 
Lorraine, the bitter enemy of Elizabeth, was now 
Catharine de Medici's henchman, and was busy nego- 
tiating a renewal of the Catholic League, which boded 
ill for England and Protestantism if it succeeded. 
A meeting was to take place between Catharine and 
her daughter, Elizabeth, Philip's wife, with Alba and 
Lorraine in the background, to settle an accord between 
France and Spain for the utter extermination oi Pro- 
testantism throughout the world ; and even the Bourbon 
Huguenot princes oi' France had been temporarily 
silenced. In the circumstances Elizabeth naturally 
wooed Spain violently, and before Guzman had been 
in England a week he found himself in the centre 
of a real or feigned conspiracy of the unprincipled 
Dudley, to introduce Catholicism into England under 
Spanish protection, and depose Elizabeth's Protestant 
minister, Cecil, On the pretext that Cecil had helped 



DUDLEY'S NEW INTRIGUE 227 

in the production of a book by John Hales in favour 
of Catharine Grey's claim to the succession, Dudley's 
friends secretly urged Guzman to recommend Eliza- 
beth to dismiss and punish Cecil, ** as if he were out 
of the vi^y, the affairs of your Majesty would be more 
fa^'ou^ably dealt with, and religious questions as well, 
because Cecil and his friends are those who persecute 
the Catholics and dislike your Majesty, whereas the 
other man is regarded as faithful, and the rest of the 
Catholics so consider him, and have adopted him as 
their instrument." 

Dudley again was willing to become the humble 
servant of Philip if Cecil could be got out of the way 
by Guzman's aid. He hoped still, he told Guzman, 
to many the Queen ; "'he had an understanding 
already with the Pope, and a person was in Rome 
to represent him." When, however, Guzman asked 
for details of exactly what Lord Robert promised to 
do with regard to religion, the answers were vague, 
and the example of Bishop Quadra, moreover, was 
not lost on his successor. The ambassador knew 
that Philip was not ready to attack the English Pro- 
testants yet, or on the shifty word of Dudley, but he 
prepared the ground cleverly for future action. The 
first thing, he told the conspirators, was to bring the 
Oueen into close friendship with the King of Spain, 
and with the Catholics through him, as otherwise she 
would not dare to dismiss her Protestant ministers. 
" All people think," he wrote to the King, " that the 
only remedy for the religious trouble is to get these 
people turned out of power, as they are the mainstay 
of the heretics, Lord Robert having the Catholics all 
on his side ; and I tell them that the}* must take these 
things li.e., the need for fortifying Elizabeth by the 



228 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

friendship of Spain] into consideration when they are 
seeking a remedy, and that plenty of opportunities 
will offer themselves, if needed later, to raise war or 
stop trade. ^ The Catholics are much disturbed, and 
as they have no other idea than this they will not 
abandon it until they see some way of gaining their 
point. Certainly, from what I hear, they are very 
numerous if they dared to show, or had a leader." 

But desirous as the Queen was to curry favour 
with the Catholic-Spanish party, and infatuated as 
she might be with Dudley, she could not dispense 
with Cecil's services, and Dudley's hopes again 
decreased, notwithstanding Philip's sympathy ex- 
pressed through Guzman, who was instructed to offer 
him all the aid he sought ; but only on a distinct 
promise fully to restore the Catholic religion in 
England in the event of his marriage.^ This Dudley 
could not do, though by innuendo he promised much, 
and thus Cecil remained unmolested. Elizabeth on 
this occasion was probably a party to Dudley's action, 
for she carried matters almost as far with Guzman 
herself. She went out of her way several times to 
hint broadly at her desire to enter into negotiations 
for her marriage with Don Carlos, without the slightest 
intention, of course, of ever doing so, even if the health 

' The meaning of this is that Dudley and his CathoHc friends 
were saying that the suspension of commercial intercourse was 
favourable to them, as it was driving Englishmen to desperation, 
and would lead to a revolt against Cecil. 

" Guzman was warned by his master that he must be very 
wary how he listened to treasonable suggestions, either from 
the English and Irish Catholics or from Dudley's friends, as in 
either case they might be traps. If Dudley would get Cecil 
disgraced, Philip would be delighted, but the hand of Spain 
must on no account be seen in it. — Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 371. 




WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY 

FROM THE TAINTING BY MARC GHEERAEDTS IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 



ELIZABETH SMILES ON SPAIN 229 

of the Prince had made such a match possible. She 
assured Guzman that she was really a Catholic at 
heart, "although she had concealed her real feelings 
in order to prevail with her subjects." ^ Some weeks 
later she ordered a crucifix and ornaments to be placed 
upon the altar in her chapel, and Guzman told her 
that the preachers were slandering her for it, where- 
upon she said that she would order crosses to be 
placed in all the churches in the realm. 2 

Elizabeth, indeed, was seriously alarmed at the 
impending Catholic League, and in addition to redress- 
ing the Spanish trade grievances and lavishing endless 
blandishments upon Guzman, she made a desperate 
bid to draw Catharine de Medici to her side by open- 
ing negotiations for her own marriage with the boy 
King of France — negotiations as insincere, doubtless, 
as the rest, but directed to the same end, namely, the 
diversion of France and Spain from their threatening 
friendship, as were also the attempts to revive the 
now almost outworn subject of the Queen's match 
with the Austrian Archduke. The constant changes 
perfectly bewildered Guzman, who found Dudley 



' Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 

= \Vhen Elizabeth visited the University of Cambridge on her 
autumn progress, she declined, in consequence of want of time, 
to attend a theatrical performance offered to her by the students. 
Before she reached her next stopping-place she was persuaded 
to alter her mind, and she returned to witness the play. To her 
annoyance the imprisoned Catholic bishops were lampooned 
upon the stage with much sacrilegious buffoonery, whereupon 
" the Queen was so angry that she at once rose and entered her 
own chamber, using very strong language, and the torch bearers, 
it being night, left them in the dark, and so ended this scandalous 
representation." — Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 375, Guzman to the 
Duchess of Parma. 



230 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

(now created Earl of Leicester) blowing hot and 
cold. The Catholics, on the one hand, were smiled 
upon by the Queen, and on the other strong measures 
were being proposed by Cecil and his friends to stay 
the growth of "papistry." But though PhiHp wrote 
on behalf of the Catholic English bishops in prison, 
and Guzman urged for the toleration of Catholic 
worship, no practical concessions could be obtained 
from Elizabeth, much as she might smile and suggest 
to Guzman, with whom she had grown personally 
very intimate. 

In the meanwhile the elaborate preparations for the 
settlement of the Catholic League by the meeting of 
the Queens of France and Spain at Bayonne went on, 
and rumours came to England which caused Eliza- 
beth additional alarm late in 1564, that Philip himself 
was coming to Flanders in the following year to bring 
his Flemish subjects into due subjection. EHzabeth's 
amiability then grew more intense than ever. " How 
much she wished her dear brother could stay in one 
of her ports, that she might regale him ! " and Guzman 
was the object of her constant affectionate solicitude 
at the numerous balls, feasts, and tourneys to which 
she invited him, often deploring that his master was 
not there, too, to enjoy the fun. It must be confessed 
that, to judge by the relations between Guzman and 
the French ambassador in England (de Foix), the 
coming national alliance between their respective 
countries did not look promising. De Foix had 
Huguenot leanings, and Guzman always resented 
his presence at Court at the same time as himself, 
Elizabeth on several occasions having the greatest 
difficulty in keeping the peace between them, when 
by some inadvertence they met in her presence. 



THE BAYONNE MEETING 231 

Indeed, as was soon afterwards proved, the national 
jealousy of France and Spain and the personal 
interests of Catharine overrode the Catholic religious 
object of the League so perseveringly promoted by 
Cardinal Lorraine and Alba. 

On Ash Wednesday, 1565, Elizabeth listened to 
an open-air sermon preached by Dr. Nowell, Dean 
of Saint Paul's, an ardent Reformer, who probably was 
not a politician. In the course of his sermon he 
condemned the veneration of images, and Elizabeth 
angrily told him not to talk upon that subject. 
Nowell either did not hear her or did not choose 
to regard the rebuke, and continued, when the 
Queen again raised her voice and peremptorily 
commanded him to pass to another subject, as that 
one was worn out. Soon afterwards de Foix, in 
conversation with Guzman, remarked that the 
Queen might have avoided so public and marked 
an interruption of the preacher. The Spaniard was 
of another opinion. " I think quite differently," he 
said. ** Those who sin publicly must be publicly 
rebuked ; and as this Queen does, so might your 
most Christian King do it : when he gets older he 
will, I fear, be likely to make more account of the 
heretics." 

The much feared interview of Bayonne, which 
the warlike party in Spain hoped would result in 
the crushinof of Protestantism and the eventual sub- 
mission of England to Spanish dictation, took place 
in these not very encouraging circumstances in 
May, 1565. Elizabeth, as a diversion, had been 
for months negotiating with Catharine for a French 
marriage, and the Queen Regent of France was 
taken aback when she saw at Bayonne the articles 



232 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

which she was expected to sign. The total exter- 
mination of Protestantism in France and the world 
over would have meant her personal political extinc- 
tion, and probably that of her son's realm ; for 
Philip in that case would have been paramount. 
What she wanted was not this, but to be able to 
play the Guises off against the Bourbons, and keep 
Elizabeth always as a potential ally when the 
Catholics grew too strong to suit her. At Bayonne, 
therefore, whilst she ostensibly acceded to everything 
dictated by Alba and Lorraine, and led her devoutly 
Catholic and hispanolised daughter to believe that 
France with all its national power would support 
her husband's objects, Catharine no sooner turned 
her face towards Paris than she began to introduce 
all sorts of conditions and limitations which stultified 
the whole plan of the Catholic League, whilst she 
became more warmly interested than ever in the 
talk of Elizabeth's marriage with one of her sons. 

The result of the much discussed conferences of 
Bayonne, in which Philip personally had never been 
very sanguine, finally disillusioned him as to the prac- 
ticability of a league with his artful mother-in-law 
which should make him master of Europe. He had 
thenceforward no other policy open to him than to 
revert to the traditional national affinities that had 
obtained before the religious changes in Europe. He 
must win England to his side by fair means or foul. 
For seven years he had tried to isolate her by means 
of a Catholic league and he had failed : he had spoken 
arrogantly through Feria, he had tried subtlety 
through Bishop Quadra, and he had essayed friendly 
cordiality by means of Guzman. Elizabeth, when it 
suited her, had been amiability itself, she had Ian- 



ELIZABETH'S DIPLOMACY 233 

guished for a Spanish husband, she had pretended 
more than once to be a CathoHc, she had smiled, 
pouted, or frowned, as her aims for the moment 
required ; but, notwithstanding all this, the English 
Catholic bishops were still in durance. Catholic 
worship was still proscribed, and Philip was further 
off than ever he had been from controlling English 
statecraft for his own ends. 



CHAPTER VI 
1565-1569 

Mary Stuart marries Darnley — Their intrigues with Philip through 
Guzman — Plan to promote revolution in England in favour of Mary — 
Expulsion of the English ambassador from Spain — Recall of Guzman 
— Don Gerau de Spes ambassador — His character — Commences con- 
spiring at once — His turbulent behaviour — Seizure of Philip's treasure 
in England — Indignation of de Spes — His imprudent and disastrous 
action — Alba stops trade — Strained relations — Proposed declaration of 
war against England — The views of Philip and Alba — The Norfolk plot 
— The Northern rebellion 

IN July, 1565, Mary Stuart had been swept by 
her passion along the rapids that led to her 
marriage with Darnley and her ruin. Up to 
this period her policy had been consistent and 
sagacious, directed mainly to the recognition of her 
present or prospective right to succeed to the throne 
of England. She had tried to attain the end alter- 
nately by the only two means open to her, by 
seeking marriage with a Catholic prince strong 
enough to enforce her claims, and by winning 
Elizabeth's acknowledgment of them by submission 
to her will. So long as she was under the influence 
of Cardinal Lorraine, and the Guises were powerful, 
her main efforts had been in the first direction, but 
after her arrival in Scotland the influence of Murray 
and Lethington had led her into the second course. 

In a former chapter it has been related how, despair- 

234 



THE DARNLEY MARRIAGE 235 

ing of obtaining recognition from Elizabeth, Mary 
and her Protestant Anglophil advisers had on one 
occasion, in 1563, reverted to her earlier plans, and 
had attempted to secure Philip's aid through her 
marriage with Don Carlos. She had never since 
quite abandoned this hope — her only one in this 
direction, since Guise was dead and Catharine de 
Medici was her deadly enemy. It is true that she had 
satisfied herself before Darnley arrived in Scotland 
that Don Carlos was unlikely or unfit to be a 
husband for her,^ but prudence would have dictated 
delay in her marriage in order that Philip might 
have provided her with another Consort who would 
take with him the support of Spain. But Mary lost 
her head, if not her heart, when she saw " the long 
lad " Darnley, and took the step which made it, at 
first sight, appear the more difficult for Philip to help 
her, and which yet alienated from her Murray and the 
Protestants and brought her into open enmity with 
the Queen of England. On the other hand, the 
wedding of both the Catholic claimants to the Crown 
of England consolidated the Catholic elements in the 
north, making Elizabeth's position more dangerous 
than at any time since her accession, and Mary had 
undoubtedly not lost sight of this feature, which she 
saw might yet enable her to obtain Spanish support 
when the time for action came. 

On the 24th March, 1565, four months before the 
Darnley marriage, though the prospective bridegroom 
was already in Scotland, a servant of the Lennoxes, 
named Fowler, came to Guzman in London with a 
letter from Mary Queen of Scots. He had been 

^ The Duchess of Aerschot had written to her from Flanders 
to this effect at the end of 1564. 



236 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

sent from Scotland, he said, by the Queen, ostensibly 
to obtain from Elizabeth a passport for Secretary 
Lethington to visit England, but really to ask the 
Spanish ambassador whether he had instructions to 
discuss with her a certain business that had formerly 
been broached to King Philip through his predecessor. 
Bishop Quadra, as if so she would send Lethington 
to see him. Guzman did not know Mary's hand- 
writing and was suspicious, especially as he was 
aware that Don Carlos could on no account marry 
Mary ; so that Fowler, who said he could not return 
to Scotland without an answer, proposed to prove his 
bond fides by showing his mistress's letter to Luis de 
Paz, a Spanish merchant, who knew her handwriting. 
On the morrow Guzman was satisfied of Fowler's 
honesty, and as he heard alarming news of a plan to 
marry Mary to her French brother-in-law, he hesitated 
no longer but sent the messenger Fowler back to 
Scotland with a letter for Mary, asking her to send 
Lethington to confer with him. 

A few days afterwards Guzman got a further hint 
from Darnley's mother, the Countess of Lennox, of 
what was really in the wind. She sent to tell him how 
kind Mary was to her son in Scotland, and that the 
French ambassador had come to her promising all 
French help and support to Darnley if the Queen of 
Scots married him. The Countess in her message 
to Guzman affected to distrust this French offer, 
which probably she herself had invented, "as she 
knows the French way of dealing," and said "that 
she and her children had no other refuge but the 
King of Spain, to whom she and they will ever 
remain faithful. She begs me to address your 
Majesty in their favour, so that in case the Queen 



THE DARNLEY MARRIAGE 237 

of Scots should open negotiations about Lord 
Darnley, or in the event of this Queen's death, 
they may look to your Majesty for support." A 
week or two later the Countess of Lennox returned 
to the charge. She prayed Guzman to assure 
Lethington, when he arrived in London, "that 
your Majesty desired to favour her, as she believes 
that it would help her son's business very much. 
She thinks he may marry the Queen of Scots, who 
rests her claim to this country more on the support 
of your Majesty than on anything else, especially 
as the Queen-mother of France is very much against 
hen" This seemed to Guzman important, and he 
did his best to assure Lady Lennox by hints of 
the sympathy that Mary and Darnley might expect 
from Spain. " As I have said on many occasions," 
he continued in his letter to Philip, " it should be 
borne in mind that, in addition to the Queen of 
Scotland's great claims to this realm, she has 
certainly here a very strong party, and it is highly 
desirable in many respects that she should be 
reckoned with in the interest of affairs that so 
deeply concern us. The English ports are neces- 
sary for the passage of trade between Spain and 
Flanders, &c. ; and, besides this, these English 
are beginning to navigate largely, and may inter- 
fere with us in the Indies, upon which they look 
greedily, unless they are prevented from sailing." 

Even mild, conciliatory Guzman was thus already 
joining those who looked eagerly for the ejection of 
Elizabeth and the substitution of Mary Stuart as 
Queen of a Catholic Britain under Spanish control. 
When Lethington arrived in London, therefore, on 
the 24th April, 1565, Guzman was quite prepared 



238 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

for the approaches he knew would be made. The 
two first met at some formal occasion at the French 
Embassy, and as they went along the road together 
on their way home, Lethington tried to arouse the 
fears of the Spaniard by hinting that Elizabeth was 
fishing for a French husband ; but Guzman parried 
that by saying that in such case it would go hard 
with the Queen of Scots, who would then be on 
bad terms with both England and France. The 
next day, 25th April, the Scottish Secretary of State 
unmasked his batteries. Closeted secretly with Guz- 
man at Paget House in the Strand, he explained 
how Mary had always desired to lean upon Spanish 
support alone, how she had bidden for the hand of 
Don Carlos, and had waited two years for Philip's 
answer. Now there were thoughts of the Countess 
of Lennox's son, since the King of Spain, it was 
feared, might have other views for Don Carlos. 
Lord Darnley had many advantages, but if the 
King of Spain gave her any hopes of Don Carlos 
the Queen would not conclude the proposed marriage 
with Darnley. Guzman replied that the King had 
not pursued the negotiations for Don Carlos because 
he had heard that Cardinal Lorraine had practically 
arranged with the Emperor for Mary to wed the 
Archduke Charles. . After much conversation and 
explanation on this point, in which Cardinal Lorraine's 
betrayal of his niece was made clear, Guzman 
cautiously expressed approval of Darnley, as he 
says, "trying to keep them in a good humour in 
view of eventualities." 

But this was not enough for Lethington. Setting 
forth the enmity that the Darnley match might draw 
upon Mary from the Queen of England, he continued, 



SPAIN AND DARNLEY 239 

"All this would cause grave evil, but could be 
remedied by the King of Spain taking my Queen 
and her affairs under his protection, in the assurance 
that at all times and in every matter they shall be 
considered as his own. . . . Such an arrangement 
would have to be treated with the utmost secrecy 
until the opportune moment arrived. There is no 
doubt whatever that the majority of the [English] 
gentry and common people are attached to my 
Queen, and I can promise positively that she will 
follow the wishes of your master in everything." 
Lethington then suggested that, as the despatch of 
an ambassador from Scotland to Spain might alarm 
Elizabeth, the King of Spain might authorise Guzman 
to conclude a secret agreement by which Mary and 
her future husband should be bound absolutely to 
Spain in return for Philip's support, or otherwise that 
the affair might be carried through by Mary's ambas- 
sador in Paris (Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow) and 
the Spanish representative there. 

Once again we see here that the exigencies of 
the position had driven the Protestant Lethington to 
place Scotland and, if possible, England, under the 
tutelage of the King of Spain, if no other way could 
be found to enforce the claim of Mary to the English 
Crown, The course he took was dictated by the 
highest diplomacy, whatever might be said for its 
religious consistency. Failing Don Carlos and the 
King of France, who are now out of the question, 
Darnley was, in fact, the only man who could unite 
the English Catholics in Mary's cause and attract 
foreign support to her claims. Lethington and Mary 
knew that Philip's vital political need was a submissive 
England, and that Scotland was only interesting to 



240 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

him as contributing to that end. If Philip, by means 
of Mary and the Lennoxes, could obtain command of 
the powerful Catholic elements in England united in 
favour of the two legitimate heirs to the Crown, with 
the added advantage of a permanent base of opera- 
tions in Scotland, he might find himself by the death 
or deposition of Elizabeth, which might be brought 
about at any time, the virtual master of Great Britain. 
No wonder, therefore, that Guzman smiled upon 
Lethington's important mission, and promised to send 
post haste to Spain for the King's decision. 

Whilst Elizabeth was making frantic efforts to 
prevent Mary's marriage, and to keep up an appear- 
ance of negotiating for her own union with Don Carlos 
or the Archduke, and Leicester was again trying to 
win Spanish support for his suit by Catholic profes- 
sions, Philip recognised that the offer made by Lething- 
ton to Guzman at last gave him a real opportunity 
of carrying through his plans for subjugating England 
by means of a subsidised Catholic rising in favour of 
Mary and Darnley. The suggestion was one after 
his own heart, and he accepted it with alacrity. 
Although cautiously, he was gradually coming round 
to the view that had been urged by Feria in the first 
days of Elizabeth's reign, that England would have 
to be dealt with by force, only now, and for years 
afterwards, he wanted it to be the force of others 
wielded for his benefit. The King's answer to Guz- 
man was unusually decided and emphatic for him : 
" Your news has been very pleasing to me, and on 
the assumption that the marriage of the Queen and 
Darnley has really gone so far as they say, the 
bridegroom and his parents being such good Catholics 
and our affectionate servitors, and having in view the 



PHILIP AND THE DARNLEY MATCH 241 

Queen's good claims to the Crown of England, to 
which Darnley also pretends, we have decided that 
the marriage is one favourable to our interests, and 
should be promoted and supported to the full extent 
of our power. We have thought well to assure the 
Queen of Scotland and Lord Darnley's party, which 
we believe is a large one in the country, that this is 
our will and determination, and that if they will be 
ruled by our advice, and will not be precipitate, but 
will patiently await a favourable juncture, when any 
attempt to frustrate their plans would be useless, I 
will then assist and aid them in the object they have 
in view. I have instructed the Duke of Alba to 
write to this effect to the Scottish ambassador in 
Paris ; but I think well to advise you also that 
you may know my views and keep them quite 
secret from the Queen of England and her friends, 
seeing the great danger that would result to this 
business and all our affairs if it were known. You 
may assure Lady Margaret of the sympathy and 
goodwill I bear to her son and towards the successful 
accomplishment of the project, in order that they may 
be satisfied, and know that they may depend upon 
me, and so be able to entertain and encourage the 
Catholics and their party in England." ^ 

Philip foresaw the danger of Elizabeth's being 
driven by the fear of a Catholic coalition against 
her to adopt Catharine Grey, or some other Protestant, 
as her successor, and he enforced upon Guzman, the 
Lennoxes, and the Scottish and English Catholics, 
the closest secrecy, and especially that every means 
should be employed to prevent a rival successor being 

* The King to Guzman, 6th June, 1565. — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. i. 433. 



242 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

brought forward. At the same time there is in the 
King's letter to his ambassador no concealment of 
the intention to use this union of Mary Stuart and 
Darnley to foment a Catholic revolt in England which 
shall sweep Elizabeth aside. "You will," he, writes, 
"keep in good intelligence with their party in 
England and with the Catholics, which is the same 
thing, and try by all means in your power to animate 
and encourage them to carry the business into effect, 
promising them what I have said. But it must all be 
done so dexterously and adroitly that it shall not 
become public or reach the Queen's ears, or evil 
results will ensue." 

Anxious as Philip might be for secrecy, it was 
difficult to attain where so many people were con- 
cerned. Already Murray and the Scottish Protestant 
nobles had fallen away from Mary on tht mere 
rumour of a Catholic Darnley match, and were looking 
askance at the Queen's new Catholic friends. The 
Lennoxes, even the Earl himself, retorted foolishly 
by boasting of the support of the King of Spain, ^ 
which made matters infinitely worse and gave rise 
to alarming whispers in Scotland that religious perse- 
cution at the point, mayhap, of Spanish pikes might 
be the outcome of this godless wooing. Darnley, 
who was still ill in bed, was as imprudent as his 
father ; threatened to break the Duke of Chatel- 
herault's head as soon as he could get up, and 
vapoured about his coming greatness under foreign 
auspices that would enable him to snap his fingers 
even at the Queen of England. Nor was Mary 
herself much more cautious in her utterances, and 
the English agent, Randolph, attributed her new-born 
* Randolph to Cecil, 29th April, 1565. — Scottish Calendar (Bain). 



PHILIP AND THE DARNLEY MATCH 243 

pride and indifference to the effects of some devilish 
enchantment. 

But though she was deeply infatuated with "the 
young fool," Mary would not marry him until she 
had received a reply to her advances to Philip. The 
match with Darnley was to give her, she hoped, 
the English Crown, but it could only be done with 
the aid of Spain. So, tired almost of waiting, she 
seized upon a hollow pretext to send James Hay, 
of Balmerino, to London to see Guzman, and learn 
if he had any news for her. On the very day that 
Hay first saw the Spanish ambassador Philip's important 
letter had arrived in London. The Scot had just 
been violently snubbed by Elizabeth, and all his 
requests refused contumeliously, as no doubt he had 
foreseen they would be ; his real reason for coming 
south at all, indeed, being to obtain the sanction not of 
the Queen of England but the King of Spain to 
Mary's marriage with Darnley. The reply from 
Philip that Guzman gave to Balmerino was indeed 
a welcome one. " He appeared delighted with it, 
and said that his Queen desired nothing so much as 
that she should follow your Majesty's orders in all 
things, without swerving a hair's breadth, and that you 
should take her under your protection. I urged him 
to try to get his Queen to manage her affairs prudently, 
and not to strike until a good opportunity presented 
itself." 

Hay only stayed in London one day longer, for he 
knew that the great wish of Mary's heart was now 
to be granted ; and though to the English partisans 
and the Protestants in Scotland he deplored "the 
evil success of his long journey," it must have been 
with a merry heart beneath his doublet that he carried 



244 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

his welcome message to Holyrood on the 7th July, 
1565. Two days afterwards Mary was secretly 
married to Darnley, though the public wedding was 
deferred until the 29th ; and the great conspiracy 
against Elizabeth and Protestantism was then com- 
plete. Mary was so infatuated with Darnley at the 
time that she would probably have married him in 
any case, but her caprice for him and her determi- 
nation to supplant Elizabeth had thus led her to 
promise the submission of herself and her realms to 
the dictation of a foreign monarch, the traditional foe 
of France that she pretended to love so well ; a 
monarch whose first object was to gain command of 
the policy and resources of Scotland and England by 
exterminating the religion of a large proportion of the 
people. It was a triumph for her that her marriage 
with the man for whom she was temporarily crazy 
should be instrumental in gaining what she had striven 
so hard for since she left France, namely, the 
support of Spain ; but indoctrinated though she was 
by the cynical teaching of her uncle, Cardinal Lor- 
raine, she can hardly have realised the turpitude 
of the act of treachery she was committing. She had 
been cherished and beloved even by her Protestant 
subjects, and yet the step she was taking would lead, 
if she were successful in her object, to the employment 
of the hideous methods of Spanish religious coercion 
to crush their religious liberty, to the subordination of 
the land of her birth, and of England over which she 
aspired to rule, to the interests of a foreign nation, and 
would involve the ruin or death of another Queen 
closely related to her. 

On the other hand, it must be allowed on Mary's 
behalf that her circumstances were exceptionally 



MARY STUART'S POLICY 245 

difficult. The political system of Catharine de Medici 
had deprived Scotland of the strong ally that for 
centuries had been its main protection against the 
aggression of England, whilst the spread of Protes- 
tantism in Scotland had created a new bond of union 
between the country and Elizabeth's government. In 
order to be able to rule Scotland peacefully in these 
circumstances it was necessary either that the sove- 
reign should accept frankly the Reformed doctrines and 
become more or less a vassal of England, or else 
make common cause with the great enemy of the 
Reformation, submit to the dictation of Spain with all 
it involved, and restore the lost balance of power 
in Europe to Philip's advantage by uniting England 
and Scotland under Catholic rule. The effect would 
have been to reduce France to a secondary position, 
to secure supremacy for the papal Church, and to 
place Europe at the bidding of Philip II. Between 
these two alternatives Mary chose that to which her 
Guisan and Catholic traditions led her, and, reprehen- 
sible as her choice may seem to the political ethics 
of to-day, it was in the circumstances the most natural 
course for her to take. 

There was no hesitation or weakness in Mary's 
attitude as soon as she had taken the step and married 
Darnley with the blessing of Philip. Knox thundered 
his denunciations from the pulpit, but whimpered and 
"longed to depart" when the guns of Edinburgh 
Castle began to speak; Murray, with his 1,200 men- 
at-arms, meaning mischief, waxed lachryniose when he 
found that the burgesses shrank from open disloyalty 
to the Queen, and that Elizabeth dared not help him 
now to rebel against the friend and ally of Spain. 
Mary, on the other hand, was confident and energetic. 



246 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Keeping the saddle through the foulest weather, and 
over execrable paths, she rode almost alone, armed, 
and eager to meet her rebellious brother and his 
supporters. This was the eventuality which she had 
foreseen when she had ensured Catholic support from 
abroad on her marriage with Darnley, and she lost no 
time in claiming it. 

All the North of England was on the alert and 
ready for action in her favour if success were assured 
by the aid they looked for from Philip ; and to the 
Pope Mary appealed even before her marriage was 
publicly celebrated. The Protestants, she wrote, 
were in arms against her, the Queen of England 
was in desperation : if his Holiness would send a 
force of 12,000 men to Scotland for six months the 
religion of Rome might be restored permanently. It 
was too much for the Pope to do without Philip's 
connivance, so he put off Mary's envoy with 
fair words until the reply could come from 
Spain. I To Philip himself she also wrote shortly 
before her public marriage (24th July, 1565): "I 
have given notice to your ambassador of all that has 
taken place, on the assurance that in the event of my 
urgently needing your succour and assistance, which I 
do, your Majesty will grant them to me in order to 
maintain the faith, with which object you raise such 
great forces against the Turk. I can truly say that 
no war is more dangerous to Christianity nor more 
pernicious to the obedience due to princes than that 
moved by these new evangelists (God grant that you 
may never be troubled with them in your dominions), 
and I therefore beg your Majesty, for this reason, and 
in consideration of the desire I have and always have 
^ Cardinal Pacheco to Philip. — Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 



THE CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY 247 

had to bind myself to you against all the world, to 
instruct your ambassador to uphold the rights of the 
Earl of Lennox's son and my own in England, and to 
order him to declare to the Queen of England that 
you will not allow anything to be done to our 
disadvantage." ^ 

There is no doubt that a vast Catholic conspiracy, 
especially in the North of England, was in existence 
at this time, full of hope, encouraged by the agents of 
the Countess of Lennox, that the aid of Philip sent to 
Mary would enable them to shake off the yoke of 
Elizabeth and her Protestant ministers. The constant 
injunctions of the King of Spain that everything must 
be kept inviolably secret, and no move made until 
success was ensured, had been powerless, as usual, 
to close the mouths of elated people who thought 
that their days of tribulation were soon to end. 
Before Mary's public marriage the eager English 
Catholics also sent their own emissary to the Spanish 
Regent of Flanders, Philip's sister, the Duchess of 
Parma, to confer with her, and thence to proceed to 
Scotland. The man they chose was one Francis 
Yaxley, who had filled several bureaucratic posts in 
the English Court, especially that of Clerk of the 
Signet during Philip's stay in England. He had 
been a friend of Bishop Quadra and a follower 
of Cecil, but at this time was a professed Catholic 
attached to the Lennox party. He knew foreign 
countries, and had even been in Spain ; so that he 
was considered to be a good instrument for bringing 
into accord the English Catholics, the Scottish Queen, 
and King Philip. Guzman, giving notice to the King 
of his going to Flanders, says that " he is a person 
* Labanoff, vol. vii. 



248 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

well acquainted with affairs here and will be able to 
give the Queen of Scotland a great deal of informa- 
tion. They (i.e., the English Catholics) say that he 
is a devoted servant of your Majesty." ^ 

Exactly what this man arranged in Flanders before 
proceeding to Scotland is not known, but when he 
arrived, in August, at Leith, Randolph, the English 
agent in Edinburgh, knew enough to suspect him. 
"His errand I yet know not," he wrote to Cecil, 
"and would I knew what might be said to such 
'gestes' who come for little good." ^ Whatever 
message Yaxley brought it was a welcome one to 
Mary and her husband, Darnley particularly " re- 
joicing and imparting all his affairs to him." Yaxley 
is represented by the English agent as imposing upon 
Darnley and his " yong company," by his boastful 
talk, "as a fit man to send abroad, as he knew so 
well the Courts of Spain and England, besides his 
acquaintance in Flanders and at Brussels, that he 
doubted not to accomplish any commission. So he 
is to pass secretly to the Duchess of Aerschot 
[Mary's aunt], who shall procure him audience of 
the Regent, to whom he shall declare that this 
Queen . . . will commit herself, her husband, and 
her country to his [King Philip's] protection, and, 
seeing the Queen of England disposed to marry 
the French King, the rather to maintain her [Mary's] 
estate she and her husband will remit all her titles to 
England to the King of Spain's judgment ; and if 
the Duchess of Parma thought meet he is to pass 
with these offers to Spain. . . . He [Yaxley] told his 
secret friends the names of many noblemen and 

^ Spanish Calendar (Hume), vol. i., i6th July, 1565. 
» Scottish Calendar, vol. i. (Bain). 



THE CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY 249 

gentlemen of good power in England ready to follow 
the King of Spain's directions for the alteration of 
religion." ^ 

Before Yaxley left again — not, as this letter says, 
to Flanders, but direct to Spain from Dumbarton — 
he renounced his English citizenship to become a 
Scotsman. "The Queen and her husband," wrote 
Randolph, "have sent him ambassador to Spain; 
he embarked three days past [i.e., 17th September]. 
It passes my power to know his commission, but it 
is for little good." 2 What Randolph could not 
fathom is to some extent divulged to us by the 
letter Mary wrote to Philip by Yaxley ; although, of 
course, his verbal message was more precise as to 
what was required and intended. " Monsieur mon 
bon frere," she writes from Glasgow on the loth Sep- 
tember, " the earnestness you have always displayed 
in the maintenance of our Catholic faith has caused 
me previously to crave your favours and aid, foreseeing 
that which has now happened in this realm of mine, 
tending to the entire ruin of the Catholics and the 
establishment of these unhappy errors. In resisting 
them my husband and myself will be in peril of losing 
our Crown, and by the same means our claims else- 
where, unless we have the help of one of the great 
Christian princes. Bearing this in mind, and seeing 
the energy with which you have proceeded in your 
own States, and especially the firmness with which 
you have upheld those who have depended upon your 
favour, we have thought ;vell to address you, in 
preference to any others, to ask for your counsel, 
and for your help and support. ^.^7:th this end we 
have sent this gentleman, an Englishman and a 

^ Scottish Calendar (Bain), 15th September, 1565. ^ j^j^j^ 



250 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

faithful servant of my husband and myself, with 
ample charge to render to you an account of the 
condition of our affairs, of which he has full know- 
ledge ; praying you to give credit to his words as 
if they were our own, and to send him back with all 
speed, as the case is so pressing as to touch both 
our Crown and the liberty of the Church for ever. 
To maintain this we will spare neither life nor 
estate, with your support and counsel." ^ 

Elizabeth's Government were fully informed through 
their spies of the grave purport of Yaxley's mission ; 
and Catharine, who was almost as apprehensive of a 
Spanish domination of Scotland and England as 
Elizabeth herself, made an attempt by means of a 
special ambassador (Castelnau de la Mauvissiere) to 
win Mary away from dependence upon Philip by new 
professions of friendship towards her. Mary, how- 
ever, was in no humble frame of mind now, and 
would brook no interference either from her mother- 
in-law in France or her cousin in England, with both 
of whom she had long scores to settle. She would 
listen to no suggestions of a reconciliation with 
Murray, and she plainly threatened the French 
ambassador that if his King did not at once help 
her to punish the rebels she would invoke the aid 
of the King of Spain. The position was a triumphant 
one for Mary so long as she depended upon Spanish 
help ; and if Philip had been prompt and such armed 
aid had been sent to Scotland before Murray 
succumbed, Elizabeth might have been deposed and 
Philip have obtained the control of Britain. 

Elizabeth for once was really alarmed. There was 
the confident talk now of Philip's coming with a great 
^ Labanoff, vol. i. 



THE CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY 251 

fleet and army to Flanders, which pessimists in 
England thought might be used against this country. 
So whilst Mary of Scotland, in full hope of Philip's 
support, was defying England, Elizabeth was afraid 
of stirring a finger to help Murray and the Protestants 
ostensibly, for fear of bringing Spaniards or French 
Catholics, or both, into North Britain ; in which case 
her own crown would have been in dire danger. 
Guzman saw Elizabeth on the i6th September, and 
found her full of complaints of the ingratitude of the 
Queen of Scots and the Lennoxes, to whom she had 
been so kind and meant so well. The present 
rebellion in Scotland was not really about religion at 
all, she said, and Mary only pretended that it was, in 
order to enlist the help of foreign princes. "Well, 
that may be," replied Guzman drily, *' but in any case 
it is very inexpedient, and sets a bad example to help 
rebellious subjects in their disobedience." " Oh," cried 
Elizabeth, quite shocked at the idea, " God forbid that 
/should ever help disobedient subjects, unless I saw 
very good reason why they should not be made to 
suffer without a hearing ! " Elizabeth, indeed, who 
was sending money secretly to Murray, and throwing 
the blame for everything upon the Lennoxes and 
Darnley, was now quite apologetic at the attitude into 
which she was forced by events and by Mary's appeal 
to Spain. So powerless was she at this juncture that 
she had to sit idly by whilst Murray and his adherents 
fled across the Border (13th October, 1565) before 
Mary's threatened vengeance, and she was even forced 
to feign anger and indignation at his rebellion when 
he sought audience in England of the Queen whose 
stalking-horse he had been. 

Ignorant, of course, of Murray's collapse, Yaxley 



252 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

duly arrived at Segovia, where Philip was, on the 
23rd October, 1565, and gave his letter and verbal 
message to the King. Fortunately Philip repeated 
this message to Guzman in his letter to him, written 
on the following day, and we are thus able to under- 
stand exactly how far Mary was willing to go in her 
ambitious plans. " The first thing," writes Philip, 
"was to assure us in fair words of the great hope 
and confidence they reposed in me, desiring to govern 
themselves by my direction alone, and to do nothing 
without my consent and pleasure : for this reason they 
wish to inform me of the need in which they are, and 
assure us of their zealous desire to establish their 
realm anew under the Christian religion, and to join 
other Christian princes with that object. Not having 
sufficient forces of their own they begged me to aid 
them as a Christian monarch ; and, in order to induce 
me to do so, the envoy set forth the danger in which 
the Queen and King of Scotland were, by reason of 
the heretics, stimulated and favoured by the English 
with men and money ; so that the said sovereigns 
might easily fall into the hands of the rebels, and 
be conveyed abroad, leaving the State unprotected, 
unless I, in whom after God they put their trust, 
aided them with money and troops. If I would 
consent to do this it would not only be the means 
of destroying the rebels, but would confirm the King 
and Queen In their hope of succeeding to the English 
throne, and would banish their fear that the heretics 
would oust them, the real heirs, and elect some heretic 
instead. They promised that if they obtained the 
succession of the Crown by my means they would 
renew more closely the alliance and league between 
England and our house against the world, and leave 



THE CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY 253 

all other friends for us. They also begged us to 
write urgent letters to the Queen of England, first 
asking her to release Lady Margaret (Lennox), 
and secondly to desist from aiding the Scottish 
rebels." ^ Yaxley also asked that an accredited 
Spanish ambassador might be sent to Scotland to 
arrange a binding treaty and to advise Mary and 
her husband as to their proceedings. 

Philip was not ready yet for heroic measures in 
Great Britain, for he was busy planning the deadly 
blow he hoped to deal upon his disaffected Flemings. 
But he sent back by Yaxley cordial letters to Mary 
and Darnley, and told them to consult either Guzman 
or the Spanish ambassador in Paris when they were 
in doubt how to proceed. What advice was to be 
given to them in such case is seen in the King's 
instructions to Guzman. " They should confine them- 
selves for the present to punishing the rebels and 
pacifying the kingdom. When they have done this, 
and affairs have settled down, they could look 
further ahead than at present." Philip was equally 
cautious in other directions. He did not want to tie 
himself openly or formally to Mary until he was quite 
sure that she would be a fit and obedient instrument 
for him to obtain command of England. She must, 
with her husband, for this purpose be able to command 
the united support of the English Catholic party, and 
Philip must be quite sure that her French relatives 
were not to influence her in any way. So he declined 
to negotiate a formal treaty or to write to Elizabeth 
about Lady Lennox, and even confined his present 
assistance to a sum of money, no less than 20,000 
crowns, which was to be secretly handed to Yaxley by 
' Spanish Calendar, vol. i. 497, Philip to Guzman. 



254 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

a Spanish banker, who himself did not know its 
destination, outside Antwerp. 

With this answer Yaxley travelled post-haste to 
Flanders, and duly took ship in Antwerp bound for 
the port of Leith with this large sum of money on his 
person. This was about the 20th November, 1565. 
The season was a terribly tempestuous one, and at 
some time in December, from the wreck of a Flemish 
ship, there was cast up by the sea upon the coast of 
Northumberland the drowned body of Yaxley with his 
treasure upon him. Guzman was alarmed when he 
heard of it, more for the letters and papers from 
Philip that the man bore than for the money, as they 
would divulge the whole plot ; but if the letters were 
found, which it is probable they were, they were not 
delivered to Elizabeth. The Earl of Northumberland 
was a Catholic noble and secretly an adherent of 
Mary's, as will be seen later ; but, although his 
attachment to her might prompt him to keep or 
destroy letters compromising her, it was not proof 
against his claiming the money upon the dead man, 
which he seized in virtue of his territorial rights ; 
although he had angry disputes and lawsuits with the 
Lord Admiral on the subject, who also claimed the 
salvage. Mary herself sent Melville to ask Northum- 
berland for the delivery of the money intended for 
her. " But all my entreaties were ineffectual ; he 
altogether refused to give any part thereof to the 
Queen (of Scots), albeit he was himself a Catholic and 
professed secretly to be her friend." ^ 

At about the same time the Pope sent to Mary, by 
Philip s permission, a similar sum of 20,000 crowns, 
and promised a subsidy of 4,000 crowns a month to 
^ Diary of Sir James Melville of Hall Hill. 



THE CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY 255 

pay troops to suppress the rebellion. But Murray- 
was in England and the revolt practically at an end 
by this time. Elizabeth was protesting with injured 
innocence that nothing was further from her thoughts 
than subsidising trouble in her dear sister's realm ; 
whilst Mary, taking Philip's advice to heart, was 
diplomatically biding her time for the great blow to be 
struck that would give her the Crown of England. 
She once more turned a smiling face upon Randolph, 
and readily agreed now to receive special ambassadors 
from Elizabeth to settle all disputes between them. 
The rebels, all but Murray and Kirkaldy of Grange, 
were received into favour again, and to please and 
lull Elizabeth into false security, Darnley was osten- 
tatiously neglected by his wife. Kirkaldy, dour and 
unbending, warned the English that Mary was fooling 
them. ** Send as many ambassadors as ye please to 
our Queen, they shall receive proud answers, for she 
thinks to have a force ready as soon as ye do, besides 
her hope of friendship [of the Catholics] in England, of 
which she brags not a little, so driving time is to her 
advantage."^ Kirkaldy was right, as events proved. 

^ How serious the situation was for Elizabeth, and how wide 
the ramifications of the CathoHc intrigue at the time, may be 
seen by a letter written shortly after this by the English spy 
Rogers to Cecil. Arthur Pole, who was a prisoner in the Tower, 
had surrendered in Mary's favour his claim to the Crown of 
England, and if he could escape from his prison was to come to 
Scotland to support her with others of his kin. Darnley himself, 
trying to outbid Mary, had boasted that forty gentlemen and 
more in England were ready to serve him. Letters passed 
fortnightly between the Countess of Lennox in the Tower and 
her son, whilst every month an emissary of the northern 
CathoHc gentry came in disguise to Darnley from Carlisle. A 
regular plan, moreover, was prepared for the capture and 
fortification of Scilly in the Catholic interest, and the repre- 



256 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Mary was temporising as Philip advised her to do, 
counting upon the aid of Spain, the Pope, and the 
English Catholics when the hour should strike. But 
for her the hour never did strike. Her evil star led 
her along the path which ended in England and 
martyrdom. 

The tragedy of Rizzio, the vicious foolishness of 
Darnley, the levity of Mary, and the falsity of Murray 
and Morton, destroyed for a time the great dream, once 
so promising in appearance, that the Queen of Scots 
would mount the Catholic throne of Britain by the aid 
of Spain. When Mary was in Lochleven and her 
infant son had been adopted as their King by the 
nobles, Elizabeth and Catharine vied with each other 
in their loud expressions of sympathy with a Queen 
thus contemned by her subjects, the object in both cases 
being to obtain, if possible, either through Mary or her 
persecutors, a pretext to interfere in Scotland, and thus 
to frustrate the Spanish combination. Murray, who was 
not in Scotland when Darnley was murdered, found 
himself assiduously courted, by the French especially, 
on his way home, and had a long friendly interview 
even with Guzman in London. After the first shock 
of dismay caused to the Catholics by the marriage of 
Mary to Bothwell — a divorced man and a Protestant — 
public opinion on their part agreed to regard her as 
innocent of the crimes laid to her charge ; and when, 
on the unhappy i6th May, 1568, Mary, weeping with 

sentative of the Irish rebel Shan O'Neil was made much of by 
Darnley, who, amongst other presents, sent to Shan two 
hundred crowns with which to buy whiskey. The hopes that 
Mary and Darnley built upon the English Catholics and Spain 
were therefore well founded, if they had been well handled. — 
Scottish Calendar, vol. ii. 293. 



MARY STUART'S FALL 257 

grief and bitter disappointment, bade a last farewell to 
the land of her fathers to claim the hospitality of her 
bitterest enemy, her party in the north still founded 
their hopes upon her, notwithstanding the black sus- 
picion that hung over her, whilst she was unsubdued 
and full of plans for future triumph over her enemies. 

In her first letter to Elizabeth she struck a high but 
unwise note, claiming admission to the Queen's 
presence and English aid to subdue her rebel subjects, 
failing which she demanded leave to go to France or 
Spain and obtain assistance there. Elizabeth refused 
both requests, for whilst she was kept in England the 
unhappy Mary had nothing to offer in return ; but 
Knollys, v/ho took the message, warned the Queen of 
England that the Catholic gentry were flocking to 
salute the fugitive, whose presence in the north was 
a danger, and Mary sent indignant and imprudent 
messages by Lord Herries to Elizabeth threatening 
to appeal to her great Catholic friends on the Con- 
tinent. This attitude sealed Mary's fate and de- 
termined her imprisonment. Lord Herries talked 
openly, even in Elizabeth's palace, of his plans for 
claiming Catholic aid for his mistress ; and although 
Guzman used all his deft persuasions to soften the 
English Queen, Elizabeth explained to him quite 
cogently again and again that she dared not allow 
Mary to bring foreign Catholic forces into Britain, 
nor from a safe refuge on the Continent to organise 
disaffection in England. 

Elizabeth, with ample reason, was at the time in a 
panic at Philip's action in Flanders. For many 
months the pretence had been kept up that the King 
himself was coming to the Netherlands to pacify dis- 
content. Great forces had been raised in Italy, Spain, 



258 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

and Germany, and a strong fleet fitted out, to the 
great alarm of the English, who feared that at last the 
time for Philip's vengeance had arrived, although 
Elizabeth had tremblingly tried to keep up the pre- 
tence to Guzman that she was delighted at " her good 
brother's" coming. At last when all was ready, in 
the autumn of 1567, vast sums of money collected, and 
the troops under arms, no longer a royal escort but a 
strong avenging army, Philip announced that he would 
not go to Flanders himself but would send the terrible 
Duke of Alba. Then all the world knew what was 
meant — war to the knife until Protestantism and 
political liberty were crushed in the Netherlands. It 
was clear to Huguenots, Lutherans, and Anglicans 
that the time of trial and struggle was at hand, and 
mutual messages and promises of support crossed 
from one to the other, for they all knew that if the 
King of Spain were victorious over dissent in his own 
land the turn of the others would come. Elizabeth's 
retort to Alba's proceedings was, as usual, both bold 
and diplomatic. She once more made strenuous efforts 
to reopen the negotiations for her marriage with the 
Archduke, she cajoled Guzman again into the belief 
that she was not in accord with the proceedings of 
her Reformed bishops ; and whilst all England was 
thrilling with sympathy for the oppressed Flemings 
she made the most elaborate protestations to the 
Spanish ambassador that she had not helped and 
would not help them in their resistance.^ But at the 
same time Elizabeth, by a policy of alternate severity 
and leniency towards them, convinced the English 



^ Guzman to the King, Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., i6th 
February, 1568. 



ALBA IN FLANDERS 259 

Catholic party that their future treatment depended 
alone upon their gaining her goodwill. 

The first suppression of revolt in Flanders effected 
by Alba on his arrival coincided with a change in 
Philip's policy towards England, probably under the 
influence of the warlike party now dominant in his 
counsels, Guzman, as we have seen, had always 
spoken fair to Elizabeth and Cecil, though he often 
complained to his master of having to deal with 
" heretics " thus. But from Madrid now a harsher 
note was struck. The English spies in Spain reported 
that all the talk now was of the coming conquest of 
England, and of Catholic combinations to overthrow 
the Queen ; and in February Elizabeth learnt from a 
messenger sent by her ambassador in Spain, Dr. Man, 
Dean of Gloucester, to inform her of the imprisonment 
of Don Carlos, that the household of her ambassador 
had not been allowed to celebrate Protestant worship 
in the embassy building. Dr. Man was a notoriously 
foolish, babbling person, and, as Philip averred, had 
openly scoffed at a religious procession, and had 
spoken at dinner before Spaniards disrespectfully of 
the Catholic faith. The Duke of Feria had been sent 
to warn him, which we may be sure he did haughtily 
enough, I and Philip, on Man's first arrival in Madrid, 
appears to have told him harshly "that he must 
conduct himself as his predecessors had done." The 
Inquisition had, so Philip declared, complained of him, 
and he was said to have acted "simply as a perverse 
dogmatiser." 

However this may have been, the prohibition of his 
own national worship within the embassy walls was a 

^ One of the English spies in Madrid, Hogan, said that it was 
really Feria who had got Man into the trouble. 



26o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

violation of diplomatic privilege, though Philip said 
that other English ambassadors (meaning Challoner) 
had put up with it ; and when Elizabeth heard of it 
she was violently angry. Cecil went to Guzman and 
told him heatedly that unless the English ambassador 
in Madrid had the same privileges conceded to him as 
those that Guzman enjoyed in London, he would 
immediately be withdrawn. Philip, said Elizabeth, 
might do as he liked with his own subjects, but he 
should not persecute hers. The complaint, of course, 
went to Madrid, and at the same time a letter to Dr. 
Man from the irate Elizabeth ordering him to demand 
immediate satisfaction from the King. Philip was 
ready for it and gave him no opportunity. In a 
violent letter to Guzman, entirely unlike his previous 
tone towards England, he tells his ambassador that 
he has banished Man from Madrid, and refused to 
have any more intercourse with him. He had, says 
the King, even tried to proselytise in Spain ; and if 
he had not been an ambassador the Inquisition would 
have made short work of him. If Elizabeth did not 
recall him at once, he would be expelled from Spain. 
When Guzman waited upon Elizabeth early in May, 
1568, with this message and handed her his new letter 
of credence, he watched her face closely. " When she 
came to the latter part about the ambassador she 
changed colour and seemed annoyed, asking me what 
it meant." Guzman, as gently as he could, gave her 
the rough message, and said that a gentleman was on 
the way from Spain to explain matters. In the mean- 
while, amongst other things, he might tell her that this 
precious ambassador of hers had publicly called the 
Pope a " canting little monk ! " " Oh ! there is nothing 
in that," said the Queen, but Guzman thought otherwise. 



STRAINED RELATIONS 261 

She had not dealt with Bishop Quadra so harshly, she 
said, although she found he was positively plotting 
against her. "She therefore grieved that her ambassador 
should be treated as he had been, especially as at this 
time suspicions and comments would arise therefrom. 
This way of treating ambassadors was a forerunner of 
greater unpleasantness, particularly coming as it did 
on the top of the news of the Catholic league against 
her, and I should hear next day what would be said 
in London about it." 

A week or so after this came the news that Man 
had been expelled from Madrid with every circum- 
stance of insult, and Guzman, anxious to hear what 
the English would think of it, called upon Cecil. He 
found the minister in a furious passion at the outrage 
upon international courtesy. Such a thing, he said, 
had never been heard of before unless a pretext for 
war was sought, and it was a great piece of dis- 
respect and an insult to the Queen, showing a desire 
to pick a quarrel with her, as had already been stated 
in certain quarters, and it now behoved the Queen to 
be prepared. It is certain that this incident, almost 
coinciding as it did with Mary Stuart's arrival in Eng- 
land and her open threats to appeal to the Catholic 
Powers for aid, greatly perturbed and alarmed Eliza- 
beth. The war of religion in France was again in 
full swing, and her friends the Huguenots had their 
hands full and could not help her, the Flemings 
were temporarily crushed under the iron heel of 
Alba, and the Catholics of the North of England 
were in a ferment at the coming of the Queen of 
Scots. 

In spite, therefore, of Guzman's remonstrances, the 
flail fell upon the backs of the English Catholics, and 



262 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

for the first time Guzman himself was treated with 
harshness. Cecil told him " that the Council re- 
garded him with suspicion, and the Queen did the 
same." The ambassador was gentler and more con- 
ciliatory than ever ; but in the new situation created 
he was not the man for the place. In February, 
1568, he had earnestly begged the King to recall 
him on the pretext of ill-health and lack of means. 
At that time, before Mary Stuart's arrival in England, 
the relations between England and Spain were not 
abnormally strained, for Mary, being deposed and 
imprisoned, was powerless. Philip sent no answer 
to the ambassador's request for several months ; but 
in May, when the prospect was no longer " quiet 
and friendly," he sent to Guzman his letter of dis- 
missal. The King at this time needed a rough, 
overbearing man to support his strong action with 
regard to the English ambassador. The communi- 
cations that had passed between Philip and Mary 
Stuart, and the reports he had received as to the 
attitude of the English Catholics of the north from 
the Lennoxes and others, had convinced him that an 
opportunity offered for dealing his blow. Guzman 
had continued gently to encourage the Queen of 
Scotland's agent, Fleming, but neither his instructions 
nor his disposition allowed him to go beyond bare 
expressions of sympathy. " I have shown him great 
goodwill, and have in general terms assured him of 
your Majesty's sincere affection for his Queen, as I 
am letting the Catholics, her friends, understand." ''■ 
But Guzman went no further than this. 

Philip always chose his instruments carefully, with a 
view for the precise task he confided to them. He 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 



A NEW AMBASSADOR 263 

had sent Guzman to London to tranquillise Elizabeth 
by cordiality and a show of simple frankness, at a 
time when trade was suspended and she was deeply 
irritated at the intrigues of Bishop Quadra. The 
ambassador had done his work admirably, but now 
another phase had to be dealt with, and a different 
man was required. To some extent, perhaps, Guz- 
man's recall may have been influenced by his own 
remark that Catholics are exposed to much danger to 
the purity of their faith by living so long amongst 
heretics, in answer to which the King told him that 
he was not to join in religious discussions with 
enemies of the Church ; but the choice of his suc- 
cessor was certainly made with a view to an alteration 
in the attitude in future to be adopted towards Eliza- 
beth by her brother-in-law. All hope of bringing her 
round to a Catholic policy was now quite abandoned. 
To invade and conquer her country, as Feria had 
proposed, when it might have been done, in the first 
days of her reign, was not at present in Philip's 
power. But he had a famous general and a power- 
ful army a few hours only from her shores, and she 
might be frightened into a humble and tolerant mood, 
perhaps, by a rough-tongued bully with such a force 
to threaten with. Besides, reports had told the King 
that the Catholics of the North of England were 
yearning for his coming to liberate their country 
from the yoke of heresy, and a bold zealot was 
needed to organise them into a fit instrument for 
Philip's future purpose. 

Such a man, though without the subtlety and 
secrecy required, was found in Don Gerau de Spes, 
a haughty Catalan knight of the Alba school, as 
intolerant as Feria himxself. It was no part of Philip's 



264 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

intention yet to quarrel openly with Elizabeth, and the 
instructions he gave to his new ambassador were, as 
will be seen presently, entirely pacific ; but the King 
was really in great trepidation as to the way in which 
the Queen would take the expulsion of her ambassador, 
and de Spes's first task was to frighten her into 
humility, and into desisting from countenancing the 
open aid that was flowing over from England to the 
Flemish rebels. When Guzman went to Hatfield 
to announce to the Queen his recall he found her 
troubled and suspicious at the rumours that had 
reached her as to the reasons for the change. " She 
showed more sorrow than I expected, and, changing 
colour, told me that she was grieved to the bottom of 
her heart that there should be any change, as she was 
so greatly pleased with my procedure. She said she 
had always shown me how pleased she was with me, 
and hoped to God there was no mystery behind this 
change." 

The supple ambassador tranquillised her. She 
knew, he said, what poor health he had, and how 
badly the English climate suited him. There was 
no other mystery behind his going than that. She 
was coquettishly aggrieved, too, at his wanting to 
leave her, as they had been such friends; and besides, 
there was all this talk about a Catholic league against 
her ! Guzman again reassured her ; but when he got 
back to London he found Cecil less easy to calm. 
He had been told alarming stories by his spies, 
most of which we now know were untrue, and after 
assuring Guzman of the grief that his recall would 
cause to the Queen, he continued that "it confirmed 
what he had heard from various quarters, that 
Cardinal Lorraine had arranged a treaty with the 



APPREHENSIONS OF ELIZABETH 265 

Duke of Alba respecting this country and the Queen 
of Scots, which had been negotiated through me 
[^i.e., Guzman] as they could not trust the French 
ambassador. It was said, also, that the Queen of 
Scots herself was in communication with me and 
sent me letters for your Majesty. It was asserted 
that, now that I had arranged it all, I wished to 
leave in order that my successor, and not myself, 
should witness the carrying out of the plan." ^ 
Guzman knew that a letter to him enclosing one 
from Mary to Philip had fallen into Cecil's hands, so 
he had to be dexterous in his management of the 
situation. He affected to laugh at such assertions 
as absurd ; 2 and the interview ended by the highest 
praise being bestowed upon Guzman, who, said Cecil, 
had absolutely gained the Queen's confidence ; and 
many dubious questions were put by Cecil as to what 
sort of a person Don Gerau de Spes was. 

Don Gerau soon showed this for himself. He was 
instructed by Philip to explain to Elizabeth the mis- 
deeds of Dr. Man that had led to his expulsion, and 
to exonerate the Duke and Duchess of Feria, and 
especially the English relatives of the latter, from 
any blame in the matter. He was also to watch 
the introduction of warlike stores into England and 
keep in touch with the Duke of Alba in Flanders ; 
but he is emphatically enjoined '* to serve and 

^ Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., 9th August, 1568. 

2 " I told him that, as for arranging anything of the sort 
between the Cardinal and the Duke, I regarded such a state- 
ment as a silly joke, the vain babble of the idle. I could assure 
him that to say that such a treaty had gone through my hands 
was absolutely false. If I had done such a thing against the 
Queen I should deserve heavy punishment from your Majesty, 
aud even from the Queen herself, such action being entirely 



266 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

gratify the Queen on every possible occasion, try- 
ing to keep her on good terms, and assuring her 
from me that I will always return her friendship as 
her good neighbour and brother." De Spes, how- 
ever, must have carried secret instructions in addition 
to this, because when he was passing through Paris, 
Mary Stuart's ambassador, the Archbishop of Glas- 
gow, recommended to him the care of the imprisoned 
Queen's affairs, "as she founded all her hopes on your 
Majesty's favour," and, in reply, de Spes said that he 
had orders to do everything he could for her. There 
is no such clause in his public instructions, and it is 
most unlikely that any ambassador of Philip would 
have dared to plunge without instructions into con- 
spiracies against the Government to which he was 
accredited, as de Spes did immediately after his 
arrival in England. 

Before crossing the Channel, de Spes had a con- 
ference with the Duke of Alba at Utrecht, where a 
long list of Philip's grievances against Elizabeth were 
discussed. The indictment was a grave one, the 
injuries said to be inflicted by the English upon 
Spaniards and Flemings amounting in value, it was 
computed, to 300,000 ducats a year ; and it is cer- 
tain that at this interview between the two fiery 
Spaniards plans for revenging and amending this 
state of things were canvassed and agreed upon. 
In England at the time there resided a Spanish 

opposed to my instructions. I had never in my life had any 
communication with the Cardinal, and I was quite sure the 
Queen would not believe such nonsense." — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. ii., 65. The English did not seem to understand fully at 
this time Philip's distrust of all French interference, even that 
of the Guises. 



AN UNWISE AMBASSADOR 267 

merchant, ambitious to fill a diplomatic rSU^ and, 
although he had lived in London for thirty years 
at least, he was as zealous and intolerant in re- 
ligious affairs as de Spes, or even Philip himself. 
This man, of whom we shall hear much presently, 
Antonio de Guaras, anxious to ingratiate himself, 
had sent to de Spes in Flanders two broadsheets 
that had just been published in England attacking 
Philip's system and the communications that it was 
known passed between the English Catholics and 
the King of Spain. Such papers, of course, had 
been published in Guzman's time, but he had wisely 
passed them by or minimised their importance. To 
de Spes they served as a spark to the tinder of his 
passion, and he arrived in England fuming with rage 
at the insolence of the heretics. 

As de Spes rode from Dover towards London, with 
a long train of Spanish residents in England at his 
heels, early in September, 1568, he was overtaken by 
a Scottish gentleman (probably James Beton) on his 
way from Paris in the service of the imprisoned Mary, 
with whom he was going to seek an interview. De 
Spes listened eagerly to his story of the ill-treatment 
of Mary by the " heretics," and told him that he had 
letters in London from King Philip to her. He had 
enough prudence to tell the Scot when, after their 
arrival in the capital, he came for the King's letter 
to take to Mary that it would be wise that he, as 
Spanish ambassador, should not be seen too promi- 
nently in her interests ; but he associated himself at 
once in all the Scottish Queen's plans to escape from 
her bondage, and sent her warm messages of encourage- 
ment. Almost at the same time (15th September) 
Philip himself was writing from the Escorial an 



268 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

important letter to the Duke of Alba. The Queen 
of Scots, he said, had written praying for his help 
to extricate her from Elizabeth's hands, and professing 
her readiness to die in defence of the faith. ^ " I have 
refrained from arriving at any decision or answering 
her autograph letter . . . until you tell me what you 
think of the business, and in what way and to what 
extent I should assist her. I beg you to write to 
me by the first opportunity on the matter, and in 
the meanwhile to encourage the Queen the best you 
can to persevere firmly in her saintly purpose ; for 
whilst she does so God will not abandon her." It 
is obvious from this that Philip had not decided yet 
to help Mary, but only to encourage her until affairs 
appeared to him propitious, and we shall be able to 
judge, therefore, to what extent the zeal of de Spes 
precipitated matters. 

Elizabeth was making a progress through Hamp- 
shire, and Guzman presented his successor to her at 
Newbury on the 1 2th September, 1 568. To the scornful 
anger of de Spes, Cardinal Chatillon, the Huguenot 
brother of Coligny, was also seeking audience of the 
Queen, and being feasted and made much of in the 
interval by Sir Thomas Gresham at his house in 
London. That a Cardinal, a prince of the Catholic 
Church, followed by a wife and family and with 
several bishops at his side as unorthodox as he, 
should be ruffling about the streets of London in 
cape and sword and jewelled cap, shocked de Spes 
gravely ; but that he should be asking, and obtaining, 
arms from the Tower of London and money and 

^ This letter is not in Labanoff, but it is probably similar to 
that sent to Charles IX. from Carlisle on the 26th June. 
2 Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 71. 



MARY AND DE SPES 269 

English volunteers to fight against the Catholics and 
the King in France made the Spaniard more bitter 
than anything else. The new ambassador had not 
been installed in Paget House ^ a fortnight before 
Mary Stuart's emissaries were in close conference 
with him. One of them came to him early in 
October disguised as a merchant, saying that he was 
bearing letters from her to the Duke of Alba in 
Flanders. The Conference of York, which had been 
summoned to decide Mary's guilt or innocence of the 
murder of her husband, was already gathering, and 
the Scottish Queen herself was at Bolton. How 
eager de Spes was even thus early to engage in plots 
in her favour is seen in the letter he wrote to the 
King on the 9th October giving him this news. 
" Where she is the Catholics are more numerous than 
in any part of the country. She knows how to 
ingratiate herself with her keepers, and has many 
sympathisers on her side. It will not be difficult to 
release her, and even to raise a great revolt against 
this Queen ; but it will be more prudent that your 
Majesty should not appear in this, and I will do 
nothing until I receive orders from your Majesty or 
the Duke." 2 

^ Paget House had been the palace of the Bishops of Exeter, 
and was the first of the great houses on the river side of the 
Strand outside Temple Bar, on the site of what is now called the 
Outer Temple. It had been granted by Henry VHI. to Lord 
Paget. 

^ Very shortly after this, 30th October, when he had got into 
touch with Mary's imprudent agent, the Bishop of Ross, de 
Spes wrote to the King : " I am of opinion that this would be a 
good opportunity for taking Scottish affairs in hand successfully, 
and restoring the Catholic religion in this country ; and if the 
Duke [of Alba] were out of his present anxiety and your 



270 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

All this foregathering with Scottish agents on the 
part of de Spes was not lost upon the English 
Government, whose spies reported everything. De 
Spes says that Cecil sneeringly asked Beton (the 
nephew of the Archbishop of Glasgow, who was in 
London on his way from Paris to see Mary) 
" whether he had been with his complaints to the 
new Spanish ambassador yet, and how often he went 
to Paget House." In these circumstances it is not 
surprising that relations grew rapidly acrimonious 
between Philip's ambassador and Elizabeth's 
ministers. He pressed with boldness and persist- 
ence the claims of the Spanish shipmasters for the 
depredations committed by English rovers, and by 
the Huguenots and Dutch rebels who took shelter in 
English ports ; and to these claims Cecil retorted by 
bringing up the old grievance of Dr. Man's expulsion, 
and certain insulting references to the Queen of 
England contained in a recently published Spanish 
book by Dr. Illescas on Pontifical History. To make 
matters worse, de Spes did not confine himself to the 
redress of Spanish grievances, but made himself the 
champion of Catholics generally. A Portuguese 
envoy. Dr. Alvarez, was in London to ask Elizabeth 
to forbid English ships to go to the coast of Guinea, 
where Hawkins had been slave-trading, and suddenly 
one morning the Bishop of London's men appeared 

Majesty wished, it could be discussed." — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. ii. 8i. A week later de Spes wrote : " It appears as if the 
time was approaching when this country may be made to return 
to the Catholic Church, the Queen being in such straits and 
short of money. I have already informed your Majesty of the 
offers made by the brother-in-law of Viscount Montagu, on 
condition that they may look for the protection of your 
Majesty." 



A FIREBRAND 271 

before the house in which Alvarez lived and de- 
manded that certain Englishmen then attending Mass 
there should be delivered to them for punishment. 
The Portuguese refused to surrender them, and the 
house was soon surrounded by a threatening crowd. 
Word was carried to de Spes, who immediately sent 
off one of his household to demand of the Lord 
Mayor (Sir Roger Martin) the dispersal of the mob. 
" What is the cause of the gathering .'' " asked the 
chief magistrate, and when the Spaniard told him 
that it was a question of Catholic worship, Sir Roger 
burst out in a rage that he would rather send his men 
to reinforce the mob than to disperse it in such a case. 

The presence of such a firebrand ambassador as 
this in London, in constant communication, as 
Elizabeth's ministers knew, with all the elements of 
disaffection in England, and in close correspondence 
with the terrible Duke of Alba in Flanders, convinced 
the English Government that evil plans were brewing. 
It was known that Philip's principal difficulty was 
money. The expense of the campaigns in Flanders 
and the constant wars in the Mediterranean had 
exhausted the resources of Castile, and Philip's credit 
was as bad as could be. Alba's troops were unpaid 
and growing mutinous, committing outrage and depre- 
dations upon Catholics as much as upon Protestants. 
The Duke had pressed, again and again, for money 
from Spain, and the English spies in Flanders had 
continued to send alarmist reports, all premature as 
we see now, but then believed to be true, of the 
hostile intentions of Alba against England as soon as 
he had crushed the Dutchmen and obtained the 
needed resources from Spain. 

Chance threw into Elizabeth's way a means of 



272 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

paralysing Alba for a time and rendering impossible 
the plans to injure her that she knew were hatching. 
Philip had, with infinite difficulty, managed to con- 
tract, at usurious rates, a loan of money from Genoese 
bankers, and, with his characteristic caution, he had 
stipulated that the money should be delivered by 
the lenders to the agents of the Duke of Alba in 
Antwerp. The Channel was infested with Huguenot 
privateers and pirates of all sorts on the look out for 
ships flying the Spanish flag, and the Dutch 
" Beggars " blockaded the Belgian coast. The ships, 
six or seven of them, which were bringing Philip's 
borrowed treasure were known to have sailed late in 
November, and the rovers were all on the alert for 
them when they came. Finding themselves chased, 
the treasure ships ran into English ports, some into 
Plymouth, some to Falmouth, and the largest of them 
into Southampton, in order to escape their pursuers 
and claim official English protection. Even in port 
the privateers threatened the fugitives, and two of the 
treasure ships, swift Biscay cutters, fearing that the 
heretics on shore were as dangerous as their col- 
leagues afloat, boldly ran the blockade of pirates and 
escaped, eventually arriving safely in Antwerp. 
But the others, and especially the big ship in 
Southampton with ;^3i,ooo in money on board, 
could only cling desperately to the English port 
authorities, whilst they sent swift messengers to 
Benedict Spinola, the famous Genoese banker in 
London, the agent and partner of the lenders, praying 
him to obtain safety for them. 

Spinola, being, of course, interested in the treasure, 
went at once to de Spes, and asked him to request 
officially of the Queen's Council that the money 



PHILIP'S TREASURE SEIZED 273 

should be protected effectively in the English ports, 
and, if necessary, landed and conveyed overland to 
Dover for transmission to Antwerp under English 
convoy. De Spes lost no time, and on the 29th 
November saw the Queen, who readily promised 
him a passport to carry the money overland, or, if 
the Genoese preferred it, she would have the ships 
convoyed to their destination. Satisfied with this, 
de Spes wrote to Alba for instructions as to which 
course to follow. In the meanwhile Admiral Wynter 
was leaving the Thames with an English squadron to 
relieve the Huguenots besieged by the King of France 
in Rochelle, and on the way he looked into the Channel 
ports to ensure the safety of the treasure ships. Before 
Wynter sailed finally from England Spinola, who 
was interested, as great financiers are to-day, in many 
enterprises, wrote to him that he had just received 
word that rumours were current in Spain of a great 
disaster having happened on the coast of Mexico 
to Captain John Hawkins, the bold English sailor 
who had on more than one occasion braved the 
Spanish prohibition and had conducted successful trad- 
ing expeditions to the Spanish colonies. De Spes 
had been bitterly complaining of this, and it was 
feared, said Spinola, that the Hawkins expedition, in 
which he had an interest, had been attacked and 
annihilated by the Spanish authorities. 

When Wynter received Spinola's news on the 2nd 
December he was in Plymouth, assuring himself of 
the safety of the Spanish treasure ships there. 
Wynter naturally told the evil news he had learned 
from Spinola to William Hawkins, the brother of 
John, who lived in Plymouth, and William at once 
wrote to Cecil, who was also interested in the venture, 



274 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

suggesting that Spinola should be questioned, and if 
it turned out that the Spaniards had attacked the 
English trading expedition, the money in the ships 
now being protected by EngHsh guns should be 
seized in reprisal. This letter was written on the 3rd 
December, the day after the safe conduct had been 
signed by Elizabeth for bringing the treasure overland 
to Dover, and before Cecil can have received it this 
safe conduct was on its way in the hands of de Spes's 
agents to Southampton, and so to Plymouth and 
Falmouth. Cecil's messengers, however, were not far 
behind, and, in spite of the protest of the Spanish 
captain. Horsey, the Governor of the Isle of Wight, 
by Cecil's secret orders, landed the treasure from the 
ship at Southampton and placed it in the keeping of 
the mayor of the town. Similar action was taken 
with the treasure at Plymouth and Falmouth, and 
when the news reached de Spes in London he at 
once jumped at the conclusion that the rumours were 
true that he had heard at Court to the effect that 
some of the Queen's Council and her Huguenot friends 
had been urging her to keep the treasure for her own 
purposes. 

Spinola, a resident in London, dependent largely 
upon Elizabeth's goodwill and Cecil's friendship, had, 
indeed, let out in conversation not only what he had 
heard about the Spanish attack upon John Hawkins's 
expedition in Mexico, but also that the Genoese 
financiers were responsible for the money advanced to 
Philip until it was handed to the Spanish authorities 
in Flanders. " In that case," said Elizabeth, " I can 
borrow it myself; for my credit is quite as good as 
that of the King of Spain." Rash de Spes, however, 
did not wait for any such public avowal. To his 



PHILIP'S TREASURE SEIZED 275 

intemperate and insolent protests Cecil and the other 
Councillors would only say that the money was quite 
safe, and for the present no other answer with regard 
to it could be given to him. This was on the 21st 
December and the ambassador at once sent a special 
courier to Alba with a letter praying, in burning indig- 
nation, that all English property and that of Spinola 
on Spanish soil should be seized. ^ Nothing more 
unwise than this can be conceived ; for no sooner 
had Alba made the confiscatory proclamation than 
Elizabeth not only justified thereby her seizure of the 
money, now openly avowed, but at once confiscated 
all Spanish and Flemish property in England, includ- 
ing the ships that had brought the money. 

De Spes had been saying for weeks past that the 
best way to bring the Queen to her knees, and to 
force her into the arms of Spain, would be to stop 
all English trade ; and when he had sent to Alba the 
unwise advice to make the seizure of English 
property he still believed that such a measure would 
dismay the " heretic " Government. So far from 
doing that it placed Elizabeth technically in the 

^ Almost simultaneously de Spes went to the French ambas- 
sador in London (La Mothe) and proposed joint action between 
them first to oust Cecil from his office, and secondly to stop 
trade with England entirely both from France and the Spanish 
dominions, the ostensible object being that, if this were done, 
Elizabeth and her subjects would be obliged to become Cathohc 
to avoid ruin. De Spes even proposed that the French should 
pull the chestnuts out of the fire for him by stopping trade first. 
La Mothe, in writing his account of the suggestion to Catharine, 
calmly points out the evident absurdity of both proposals. De 
Spes apparently had no notion of the incompatibiHty with 
Philip's objects of joint action of France and Spain in England. 
— Correspondance de la Mothe Fenelon, vol. i. 



276 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

right ; for up to that point she had not openly- 
avowed her intention of keeping the loan money ; 
and the value of Spanish- Flemish property in 
England was immensely greater than that of English 
property in Philip's dominions. The news of the 
seizure of the loan money fell upon Alba and his 
master like a death sentence. Without this money to 
pay his troops Alba was almost in despair, and Philip 
had exhausted his last rag of credit in raising the 
loan. In vain de Spes raged and fumed. Cecil and 
his mistress were perfectly cool about it ; for they saw 
that the impetuoasness of their opponents had put 
them in the right, and the large sum of ready money 
they had seized strengthened them as it proportion- 
ately weakened Philip. De Spes's house was placed 
under guard ; and a threatening mob in the City of 
London breathed vengeance upon the foreigners, and 
especially Spaniards, most of whom had fled into 
hiding. To make matters worse, a cipher letter from 
de Spes to Alba was intercepted and deciphered, full 
of violent and insulting references to Cecil, and other 
letters to Spanish friends in Flanders containing 
foolish abuse of the Queen herself. 'f Called upon 
peremptorily for explanation of these references, the 
ambassador could only palliate, disavow, and explain 
that he did not mean what he said ; and he himself 
was placed under arrest and forbidden access to the 
Court. 

Even then, when the dire consequences of his 
imprudence must have been patent to him, he was in 
close cipher correspondence with Mary Stuart, who 
sent him news, which he took care to exaggerate, 

^ These letters are in the Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 



DE SPES PLOTTING 277 

of Protestant plots being formed to murder King 
Philip. Writing to the King on the 8th January, 
1569, he says, after pressing him to foment dissatis- 
faction In England by stopping all trade : "In the 
meanwhile means will be found to bring this country 
to its senses and subdue it to the Catholic faith. 
Those who have spoken to me about a rising for the 
Queen of Scots will not fail to return to the subject,^ 
and I will inform the Duke [Alba], as your Majesty 
orders. Pray do not consider me or my safety, but 
take the best course for your Majesty's interests. . . . 
These heretic knaves of the Council are going head- 
long to perdition, incited by Cecil, who is indescribably 
crazy in his zeal for heresy." Later in the same letter 
de Spes tells how his own prediction came true 
and the conspirators did seek him. "The Earl of 
Northumberland came to see me disguised at four 
o'clock this morning, and is ready to serve your 
Majesty. I sent a post yesterday to the Duke by 
an Englishman who has secret communication with 
Flanders. ... At midnight last night the Bishop of 
Ross came to offer the goodwill of his mistress 
[i.e., Mary Stuart] and of many gentlemen of this 
country, and I have reported this to the Duke [of 
Alba]. The Queen of Scotland told my servant 
to convey to me the following words : * Tell the 
ambassador that if his master will help me I shall be 

* How dangerous the position was at the time is seen by 
a letter (3rd December, 1568) from Sir Francis Knollys, who 
had charge of Mary at Bolton, to Cecil, in which he says that he 
has less fear that the attempt to release Mary by subterfuge as 
Cecil thought, than by force, and begs for more troops to resist . 
attack from without. " We all agree herein, that this is an in- 
convenient and dangerous place for this Queen to tarry in." 



278 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Queen of England in three months, and Mass shall be 
said throughout the land.'" ^ 

It will be seen that before de Spes had been in 
England four months he had forced King Philip into 
a position of hardly veiled hostility towards England, 
at the very period when his lack of resources and the 
recrudescence of the war in the Netherlands made 
it impossible for him to attempt coercion upon 
Elizabeth. Alba himself was dismayed at the un- 
expectedly bold action of the English Government 
in seizing the treasure and embargoing all Spanish- 
Flemish property in England. The Flemish burghers, 
already sorely distressed by the civil war, were almost 
in open revolt at this stoppage of the rich English 
trade and the embargo of their property in England, 
and Alba, hard as he might be, was forced to make an 
attempt to reason with Elizabeth by means of some 
more pliable instrument than de Spes. The person 
chosen was the garrulous Flemish lawyer, Dassonle- 
ville, who had come to England just before Queen Mary 
Tudor's death, but he found himself more con- 
temptuously treated even than de Spes. Who was he, 

^ Whilst this letter was being written, Cecil and the Lord 
Admiral (Clinton) with a great train of followers and the 
alderman of the City came to Paget House and demanded 
to see de Spes. Cecil angrily told him that he had advised 
the Duke of Alba to seize English property, for which disloyal 
act the Queen placed him (de Spes) under arrest, dismissing his 
Spanish servants, and handing the charge of the house to Henry 
Knollys, Arthur Carew, and Lord Knyvett. De Spes answered 
defiantly, and the breach became wider than ever. Proclamations 
and counter proclamations, or printed broadsheets, w^ere issued 
by the English Council and by de Spes respectively, each claim- 
ing that justice was on their side with regard to the seizures. 
— De Spes to the King, 8th January, 1569, Spanish Calendar, 
vol. ii. 



PHILIP DESPERATE 279 

the Council asked, that he should seek audience of a 
Queen with a letter of credence from a person who, so 
far as she knew, was not a sovereign? Nothing 
wounded proud Alba so much as this slight, and poor 
Dassonleville was denied audience, and was placed 
under arrest in the house of the Sheriff of London. 

By this time no less than 700,000 ducats worth of 
Flemish ships and property had been seized in 
England, besides Philip's treasure of a million ; and 
the Spaniards, especially Alba, were bitterly regretting 
the deplorable diplomacy of de Spes. Philip, who 
hated to come to prompt decisions, was now face 
to face with a crisis. In obedience to the clamours of 
his ambassador he had stopped all trade between his 
dominions and England; by which, instead of its bring- 
ing Elizabeth to her knees, his subjects suffered much 
more than the English. It was evident, however, 
that this state of things could not continue in- 
definitely, and he was driven by these circumstances, 
at the very time when he was more hardly pressed 
than ever, to consider whether he could now conquer 
England by means of the English Catholics and Mary 
Stuart. For such a conquest to be of use to him 
It was necessary to be quite sure that Mary should be 
free from French influence, and that the new Catholic 
Government should look to him alone for orders. 

When, therefore, he received news from Alba and 
de Spes of the seizures he wrote to the former : 
" Don Gerau urges the opportunity which now 
presents Itself to remedy religious affairs In that 
country by deposing the present Queen and giving 
the crown to the Queen of Scots, who will im- 
mediately be joined by all the Catholics. Please 
inquire what foundation there is for this, and what 



28o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

success would probably attend such a plan ; as if there 
is anything in it, I should be glad to carry it out. It 
appears to me that, after my special obligation to 
maintain my own dominions in our holy faith, I 
am bound to make every effort to restore and preserve 
it in England, as in former times. If there is any good 
grounds for the suggestion, no time more opportune than 
the present could be found . . . and in order not to miss 
the chance, I have thought well to refer the decision to 
you. If you think the opportunity will be lost by waiting 
to consult me you may at once take the steps you may 
see fitting." It was not often that Philip went so far as 
this in a prompt decision, and to de Spes he was 
equally decided. "If what you suggest about taking 
the crown away from the Queen were successful, it 
would certainly be of great moment, and I would help 
it most willingly, in order to redress religion, and 
shelter and console the Catholics, who, I am con- 
vinced, are very numerous. You will learn all you 
can about this thoroughly and advise me and the 
Duke of Alba fully." ^ 

In the meanwhile the conspiracy, by far the most 
dangerous that Elizabeth ever had to face, was 
developing in London. Cecil, who, in fact, was the 
most pacific of ministers, is represented by the Spanish 
party as the firebrand, determined to precipitate a war 
with Spain. This was certainly not the case. He, 
with his cool head, understood how far he might 
go now that Philip was powerless to attack England. 
The seizure of the money destined to pay Alba's 
troops had made all the difference, and Cecil and 
his mistress knew that they might for the present defy 

^ The King to de Spes, i8th February, 1569. — Spanish 
Calendar, vol. ii. 



THE PLOT THICKENS 281 

Spain with impunity. The news of the attack upon 
Hawkins's expedition at San Juan de Lua was now 
confirmed and added to the determination of the 
English Protestant party to get even with a Power 
which, for the time at all events, was disabled for 
harm. But the conservative elements, the old English 
nobility, with their strong Catholic leanings, their 
traditions of awed regard for the alliance of the House 
of Burgundy and Spain, and with their long-standing 
jealousy of Cecil, saw in his present action a dangerous 
provocation to a Power they dreaded, and a possible 
opportunity of supplanting him and his party in the 
counsels of the Queen. 

On several occasions the nobles of this party had 
expressed to de Spes their annoyance at the seizure of 
the treasure ; and we have seen that the Earl of 
Northumberland, the powerful Catholic head of the 
House of Percy, had sought him out secretly in the 
dead of night to make disloyal offers to him. The 
Duke of Norfolk, unhappily for himself, had also 
been drawn into these questionable intrigues by his 
father-in-law, the Earl of Arundel. Late in February, 
1569, Norfolk and Arundel sent a Florentine banker 
in London, one Ridolfi, a great friend of de Spes 
and the Pope's agent in England, to tell the Spanish 
ambassador that they had put up with Cecil's imper- 
tinences and violence in seizing the treasure so far 
because they were not strong enough to resist him. 
" But they are gathering their friends, and letting the 
public know what is going on, in the hope and belief 
that they will be able to turn out the present accursed 
Government and raise a Catholic one, bringing the 
Queen to consent thereto. They think you [i.e., the 
Duke of Alba] will support them in this, and that the 



282 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

country will not lose the friendship of our King." The 
object of this conspiracy was to capture (and probably 
kill) Cecil ; and, although the nobles euphemistically 
professed to believe that Elizabeth would consent to 
a entire revolution in her religion and policy, it is 
evident that the intention of the majority was to 
depose her in favour of Mary Stuart. On the 
2nd April de Spes writes: "The Duke of Norfolk 
and the Earl of Arundel wish to serve your Majesty. 
They have many friends and adherents in the country, 
and when they hear that your Majesty will accept their 
goodwill, they will declare themselves more openly at 
a convenient opportunity. The Duke of Alba . . . 
orders me to entertain and caress them on your 
Majesty's behalf, and says that he expects shortly 
your Majesty's decision as to what is to be done. . . . 
If your Majesty orders measures to be taken for 
the conversion of the kingdom and the punishment of 
these insolent heretics and barefaced thieves, I do not 
think it will be difficult to bring them to subjection, or 
at least to change the Government and religion. . . . 
Many Catholics write to me secretly, saying that the 
moment they see your Majesty's standard raised in 
this country they will all rise to serve you." 

But Cecil was too wary to be caught by such weak- 
lings as Norfolk and Arundel, and by pretending to 
fall into their views for a time about the reconciliation 
and concessions to the Spaniards, he managed a few 
weeks after the above letter was written to throw the 
plans of the conspirators into confusion by dividing 
their counsels. In the meanwhile Alba (on the loth 
March) had to tell Philip some unpleasant truths in 
answer to his suggestion that English affairs should 
be taken in hand and settled on the impracticable 



PHILIP'S IMPOTENCE 283 

lines suggested by feather-headed de Spes. " I know 
not," Alba wrote to the King, " whether an open 
rupture with England at the present time will be 
advantageous, considering the condition of your 
treasury, and these States being so exhausted with 
the war and late disturbances, and so lacking of ships 
and many other things necessary for a fresh war ; and 
it would certainly be a grave loss of dignity, with your 
Majesty's power, to return to the old negotiations. 
All things considered, I think it would be best to 
adopt a gentle course, writing to the Queen that, 
seeing the close friendship and alliance that have so 
long existed between the two countries, particularly 
between her father and the Emperor, and your 
brotherly affection for her, even though she should 
desire to quarrel, you will not consent to do so, and 
that it shall never be said that the tie that binds you 
together has been loosened." 

To this lame and impotent conclusion had even 
warlike Alba been brought by the inevitable logic of 
events. Elizabeth had seized the treasure, imprisoned 
two ambassadors, embargoed all Spanish property in 
her realms ; she had at the time hundreds of Spanish 
sailors and others in gaol, and she rejected with 
contumely all attempts of the Spaniards to reconcile 
her on the basis of mutual concessions. The Dutch 
and the Huguenots depended now largely upon her 
support, and the English Catholics were made to feel 
more painfully than ever that appeals to their power- 
ful friends upon the Continent could not protect them 
from the hard rule of their own Sovereign. And yet, 
withal, Alba had to confess that the only course now 
open to him was to speak fair, until at some future 
time a safe opportunity for injuring Elizabeth might 
arrive. 



284 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Up to this time since Philip had faced the necessity 
for winning England by other means than moral 
suasion, the projects for doing so had always run upon 
the lines of subsidising and supporting the revolt of 
the Catholic party in the interests of the Queen of 
Scots ; and in this direction, but later with an ominous 
addition to the programme, the next attempts 
developed. During the sitting of the Conference of 
York in October, 1568, to investigate the charges 
against Mary relative to the murder of Darnley, the 
Duke of Norfolk had suggested to Lethington the 
desirability of hushing up the ugly business as against 
the Queen of Scots ; and on the following day he had 
a long, private conversation with Murray to the same 
effect. Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, 
son of the martyred Surrey, was the greatest noble in 
England, a kinsman of the Queen, and up to this time 
ostensibly a Protestant. Personally, he was popular, 
for his manners were kindly and his possessions great, 
but, as events proved, he was as weak and unstable as 
he was ambitious. At this time he was about thirty- 
three years of age, and his wife, the daughter of the 
Earl of Arundel, and widow of Lord Dacre, had died. 
Such a man, with his personal prestige and his power- 
ful name, was a fit instrument for stronger spirits than 
himself. In conversation with Murray at York, 
Norfolk said that Queen Elizabeth herself would not 
consider the subject of the succession, but it was 
necessary for the nobles of England to look ahead. 
"What could be Murray's motive," he asked, "in 
coming to England to blacken Queen Mary's 
character and thus injuring her chances of the English 
succession ? " 

As a consequence of these efforts of Norfolk, it was 



NORFOLK'S CONSPIRACY 285 

agreed with Murray and Lethington to make the 
Conference of York abortive, and Mary was informed 
of this by a letter from Norfolk. ^ In the course of 
the subsequent negotiations a few days afterwards, 
Lethington remarked that as Norfolk showed himself 
so much in favour of Mary, the whisper he had heard 
about the possibility of his marriage to her was prob- 
ably true, and, according to Norfolk, earnestly 
advocated the match.^ Norfolk listened, for the 
prospect of the matrimonial Crown of England was a 
tempting one, and his sister, Lady Scrope, who was 
with Mary at Bolton, had no difficulty in obtaining 
the Scottish Queen's acceptance of a suggestion which 
seemed to secure for her cause the higher nobility of 
England, who were anxious to overthrow the Cecils, 
and Bacons, and Hunsdons, and other new men, who 
now ruled England. De Spes was very soon 
approached, and, of course, warmly approved of the 
plan to marry Norfolk to the Queen of Scots, whilst 
a close and affectionate correspondence was carried on 
between Mary and her new suitor. For a time the 
plan was frustrated by the alarm of Leicester, when 
he suspected the real object of it, and by the dexterity 
of Cecil, as has already been described. 

Norfolk and Arundel had, however, never lost touch 
of de Spes, both of them constantly importuning him 
for money in return for their efforts in favour of the 
Spaniards in the seizure dispute. The Bishop of Ross, 
Mary's busy agent, also kept the matter alive with 
de Spes. Norfolk, Arundel, Lumley, Northumberland, 
Cumberland, Montagu, Dacre, Morley, and many 

^ " Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Hall Hill." 
2 Norfolk, on his trial, said that Leicester had also suggested 
^^ the marriage. 



286 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

other Catholic nobles, de Spes wrote to Alba, were 
ready to join in the conspiracy to release Mary and 
place England under the control of King Philip, if 
some armed demonstration were made on their behalf 
from Flanders. But Alba, as he plaintively assured 
King Philip, was powerless to assail, or even to offend, 
Elizabeth further, until she could be persuaded to 
surrender the vast quantity of Spanish- Flemish pro- 
perty she now held. Until then, he said, they must 
speak fair and softly to her, though the English and 
other Protestant privateers were capturing and 
plundering every Spanish ship they came across. 

In the meanwhile de Spes, still in disgrace and 
forbidden from Court, could only plot impotently 
through the Bishop of Ross and Italian inter- 
mediaries, many of them spies. The coming and 
going of such folk and the constant news sent by 
de Spes of the progress of the conspiracy, fairly 
alarmed Alba, who was now chiefly concerned in 
getting some of the confiscated property restored and 
trade reopened. In July he sent to de Spes, though 
he could ill spare it, the six thousand crowns bribe 
demanded by Norfolk, Arundel, and Lumley for their 
efforts in favour of the Spanish claims, and for the 
first time he spoke firmly to de Spes about his con- 
stant plotting. " I must again repeat," he said, " to 
you, most emphatically, that you are not, on any 
account, to entertain approaches to you against the 
Queen or her Councillors, or anything touching them. 
On the contrary, if people come to you with such talk, 
you must be so reticent that they may never be able 
to say that any minister of the King has given ear to 
it." At this very time the imprudent ambassador was 
almost daily or nightly closeted with some agent of 



NORFOLK'S CONSPIRACY 287 

the conspirators, and was warmly seconding their plans. 
But as pacific, almost humble, representations by other 
agents came from Alba to the English Government, 
in hope of some arrangement for the restitution, 
Elizabeth assumed a gentler attitude ; though she 
gave up not an atom of her plunder, and she partially 
released de Spes from his imprisonment. 

In the comparative remoteness of Winchester 
House, in Southwark, which he now rented, the 
Spanish ambassador, as imprudent as ever, found it 
easier than before to carry on his plots for the sub- 
jection of England ; and, regardless of Alba's stern 
injunction quoted above, he became more active and 
mischievous than ever. On the 25th July, 1569, he 
wrote to the King that the Bishop of Ross had been 
to see him at three o'clock that morning " to assure 
me of the wish of the Duke of Norfolk to serve your 
Majesty. He said he was a Catholic, and has the 
support, even in London, of many merchants and 
aldermen. I will report everything to the Duke of 
Alba and follow his instructions." Shordy before this, 
Mary herself, in one of her many affectionate letters 
to Norfolk, had intimated that she was in communica- 
tion with the Duke of Alba ; and de Spes followed 
up the letter by an assurance that everything was 
almost ready for the great coup. Whilst Norfolk was 
thus playing the game of Spain and pretending to be 
a Catholic, he was full of Protestant professions to 
Murray, and to the French ambassador. La Mothe 
Fenelon, and he avowed himself at the same time the 
devoted servant of Catharine de Medici. A majority 
of the English Council had met in caucus and had 
decided in favour of Norfolk's marriage with Mary ; 
and although it is probable that most of the members 



288 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

were not aware of the plot behind the match, it is 
certain that neither Mary nor her intended husband 
deceived themselves with regard to the ultimate aim. 
Nor was there any concealment on the part of the 
Spaniards. Alba sent Mary a subsidy of 10,000 
ducats in August (she had asked for 30,000 or 40,000), 
and at the same date de Spes wrote to the King : ** I 
believe some great event will happen here soon, as 
the people are much dissatisfied and distressed for 
want of trade, and these gentlemen of Nonsuch have 
some new imaginations in their heads." ^ 

The " new imaginations," whatever they were, hardly 
suited Philip. He had through life a distinct repug- 
nance to associating himself with the French in any of 
his plans with regard to England. Norfolk and his 
friends, doubtless in good faith, desired by means of 
Mary Stuart to change the government and religion 
of England, with or without the deposition of Eliza- 
beth, and in order to do so they were glad to obtain 
support from any quarter they could. They had 
primarily no desire to hand England, bound hard and 
fast, to Spain, which was alone what Philip wanted. 
It is certain that Mary herself was willing to do so, 
because she knew that no effective armed aid could 

^ De Spes to the King, 5th August, 1569. — Spanish Calendar. 
Nonsuch House was in the occupation of the Earl of Arundel. 
De Spes, who had not been admitted to the Queen's presence 
for many months, had hopes at this time of being received again 
to discuss the eternal question of the seizures. But another hitch 
had occurred, as the Queen refused to receive him without new 
credentials from Philip himself. It had been intended to take 
him from Oatlands, where the Queen was, to Nonsuch, after the 
audience, and there a meeting of the conspirators was to confer 
with him. This plan, however, was upset by the delay in grant- 
ing him the audience with Elizabeth. 



NORFOLK'S CONSPIRACY 289 

come to her from France, divided as that country was 
religiously and with her enemy Catharine dominant. 
Whilst Norfolk and his friends, therefore, were bid- 
ding for support on all sides and obtaining it, Mary 
was endeavouring with her might to keep the 
Spaniards, upon whom alone she depended, from slip- 
ping away from her. By the Bishop of Ross she 
begged de Spes to obtain Philip's consent to her 
marriage with Norfolk, and the ambassador, in relating 
this to the King, wrote : " The business is so far for- 
ward that it will be difficult now to prevent it, and if 
it is to be done I think it had better be with your 
Majesty's consent, which cannot fail to be of great 
advantage to them, and will bind them more closely 
to your Majesty's service. The Queen of Scots says 
that if she were at liberty, or could get such help as 
would enable her to bring her country into submission, 
she would deliver herself and her son entirely into your 
Majesty's hands ; but that now she is obliged to sail 
with the wind, though she will never depart from your 
Majesty's wishes." 

Philip, indeed, was growing doubtful of the way 
the affair was progressing, and of de Spes's manage- 
ment of it. " If the marriage of the Duke of Norfolk 
and the Queen of Scots," he wrote, "is effected in the 
way, and with the objects you are informed, there is no 
doubt that it would be of great importance for the 
restoration of our true Faith in England, and would 
console the good Catholics now so oppressed. I 
desire these objects warmly, as you know ; but they 
[the conspirators] must be very careful how they 
undertake the business, for if they make a mistake 
they will all be ruined. You did well in referring 
them to the Duke of Alba. You will limit yourself to 



290 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

this, in accordance with your orders, which you will 
not exceed." Philip distrusted Norfolk, who up to 
that time had been a Protestant, and the Duke's 
approaches to the French completed the King's 
coolness towards him. But before this letter of 
Philip's reached London the miserable Norfolk had 
collapsed. Leicester, who had been a party to the 
plan, again took fright when he began to understand 
the object behind it, and this time made a clean 
breast of it to the Queen herself. 

Suddenly the blow fell. Mary Stuart's prison was 
made closer, and Norfolk and the conservative lords 
were peremptorily summoned before the Queen at 
Windsor. The Duke, protesting his unalterable 
loyalty to Elizabeth, travelled in deadly fear as far as 
London, and on the day of his arrival at Howard 
House a messenger from the Earl of Northumberland 
came secretly to de Spes. Making a private sign, 
which had been agreed upon as a proof of genuine- 
ness, he said " that the E9.rl of Northumberland and 
his friends in the North had cj-^xe^d to liberate the 
Queen of Scotland an d establish the Catholic religion, 
returning to the amity and alliance with /our Majesty 
which they so muc'h desire. The Eaf. wished to 
know if your Majes ty would approve of this, as he 
would undertake DiOthing that was no-, in your 
interest." To this ;de Spes dared not saynore than 
that he would writce to the Duke of Alba about it. 
•'The Duke of No rfolk," he adds, " is herepreparing 
all his friends." Sio far from doing this, Ncrfolk was 
malingering in a panic, and two days latt^ fled to 
Kenninghall, whii oipering in a pitiable letter o Eliza- 
beth that he neve'r meant any harm. On hishonour, 
he never dealt w'jfith the Queen of Scots furtLr than 



COLLAPSE OF NORFOLK 291 

he declared to the Queen and some of her Council. 
Such lying and prevarication was scorned by the irate 
Elizabeth. Ill or well, she wrote in a rage, Norfolk 
must come to her instantly, and, trembling with fear, 
the poor wretch went as slow as he dared to Windsor, 
there with lachrymose repentance to be ordered into 
arrest with Arundel, Lumley, Pembroke, and all the 
rest of his accomplices who were within Elizabeth's 
reach. 

It is clear that notwithstanding de Spes's constant 
predictions of immediate coming success, and his 
repeated assurances that Elizabeth and her friends 
would be swept aside as a consequence of this plan, 
Philip was never greatly deceived by it. Alba had 
told him that he was powerless for the present, and he 
knew England sufficiently well to see that unless a 
large and well-organised force was used at the critical 
moment by him, an attempt to revolutionise England 
in his interests would fail. The trail of deadly 
deliberation, moreover, palsied every act of his life. 
At some time in August, 1569, when Mary Stuart's 
appeals were reaching him, he instructed Alba to 
obtain full particulars of the military possibilities of 
the situation in England, in order that any action he 
might decide to take later should be effectual. A half- 
dozen or more envoys of various sorts, official and un- 
official, had been sent over one after the other to try 
by some means to effect a mutual restitution of the 
seizures — Genoese financiers, Flemish diplomatists, 
and even Protestant merchants — but all without effect. 
On receiving the King's orders, however, Alba 
instructed another embassy, surely the strangest for 
such a purpose ever seen, to go to England and 
endeavour to make terms with Elizabeth or bribe her 



292 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

advisers. The leader was one of Alba's most trusted 
Italian generals, Ciappino Vitelli, and he was to be 
accompanied by fifty experienced military officers, 
with a couple of official secretaries for appearance' 
sake. That their mission was not that which 
ostensibly appeared is clear from the fact that at 
the same time Alba sent another unofficial envoy — the 
Genoese merchant mariner Fiesco — to attempt to gain 
a restitution by the private bribery of Leicester and 
Cecil. Cecil and the Queen laughed at the idea of 
such an embassy as that of this fire-eating Ciappino 
coming to settle a commercial dispute, and when the 
party arrived at Calais for embarkation for England, 
Cobham, the Governor of Dover Castle, sent word 
that only Ciappino Vitelli himself and a small suite 
would be received. A still smaller number was 
allowed to proceed beyond Dover, and another 
detachment was stayed at Canterbury ; so that by the 
time the gouty, obese, old Italian general was received 
by the Queen at Kingston-on-Thames, not even 
de Spes being allowed to accompany him to the 
presence, the military object of the mission was 
cleverly frustrated. The plague was raging in London, 
and Ciappino never entered the capital ; and his inter- 
view with the Queen was mainly taken up by her 
angry complaint of the insolence of the Duke of Alba. 
After many days of quibbling, he was told that his 
powers were insufficient, and was politely invited to 
get out of the country as quickly as possible, his 
despatches to Alba being intercepted and read at 
Dover. 

It was indeed time that so dangerous a guest should 
be promptly asked to depart ; for this was the most 
critical juncture of Elizabeth s reign and her Crown 



THE NORTHERN REBELLION 293 

trembled in the balance. All the lords were not so 
pusillanimous as Norfolk. Both Dacre and North- 
umberland had formally notified to de Spes that they 
were ready to take up arms in Philip's service. For 
many months the imprudent ambassador had been 
going beyond his instructions and encouraging these 
nobles to expect effective aid from Philip. If only 
a small number of arquebusiers were sent to them 
from Flanders, said Northumberland and Westmorland, 
they would undertake to release Mary, subdue the 
North of England, restore Catholic worship, and make 
friends with Spain. " I feel sure, " wrote de Spes, " that 
they will attempt the task ; and it will be better effected 
by them than by the Duke of Norfolk, as they are 
better fitted for it, and the Queen of Scots will have 
greater freedom in the choice of a husband." 

The questionable attitude of Westmorland and 
Northumberland caused Elizabeth to summon them 
to her presence. They disobeyed and, raising their 
standard, marched into Durham in force on the 14th 
November. Destroying the communion table in the 
cathedral, they caused Mass to be solemnly celebrated ; 
and then pushing rapidly onward towards Ripon, 
Wetherby and Tadcaster, they finally assembled on 
Clifford Moor. The Earl of Sussex, the Queen's Lieu- 
tenant in York, was for a time reduced to act on the 
defensive ; and now, if Alba had been prompt and Philip 
ready, it is possible that the die might have been cast a 
winning number ; and Mary Stuart, rescued from Tut- 
bury, whither she had been rapidly carried, might have 
been made Queen of a Catholic Britain, under Spanish 
protection. When news came to de Spes of the south- 
ward march of the lords and their renewed prayers for 
aid from Flanders, he wrote to the King : "I have on 



294 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

several occasions written to your Majesty of the good- 
will of these nobles, and I have given a letter in cipher 
to the gentleman they are sending to the Duke of 
Alba to ask for aid. They beg for prompt reply, 
as communications will soon be stopped. ... It is 
certain that there has never been so good an oppor- 
tunity either of punishing those who have so grievously 
opposed your Majesty's interests, or of restoring the 
Catholic religion, in which consists the maintenance 
of our old alliance and friendship with this country." 
To Alba de Spes wrote in jubilant strain on the 
I St December. "The rebels," he said, "were twelve 
thousand strong and were marching to release 
Mary and give battle to the Queen's forces ; " but 
he ominously adds that none of their confederates 
have yet risen. Ciappino Vitelli was still lingering 
at Colebrook, near Windsor, on the pretext of gout, 
though messages were being sent to him from the 
Queen that she considered his continued stay in 
England highly suspicious, as indeed it was, con- 
sidering that he told de Spes, who doubtless conveyed 
it to the rebels, that they ought to march straight 
to London, where nothing could withstand them, 
seeing the confusion at Court, whilst their other 
friends would have a greater chance of moving. 

And de Spes, the man who, before all others, 
had led these unfortunate lords to believe that Spanish 
aid would not fail them, was obliged, now that the 
crisis had come, to assure the Duke of Alba that 
he would "do nothing without orders from your 
Excellency." The northern lords could not wait 
for Philip's leaden pondering, nor upon Alba's need, 
and, disheartened at the lack of response, they 
fell into disunion and wasted the precious time 



THE NORTHERN LORDS FAIL 295 

besieging Barnard Castle until the approach of Sussex 
with a newly organised army struck them with panic 
and they fled to Scotland — Northumberland to be 
sold basely to the English and to the scaffold ; 
Westmorland, more unfortunate still, to seek life- 
long exile in Spanish lands — a pathetic, poverty- 
stricken pensioner upon Philip's irregular bounty, 
striving to earn his poor living by joining in plots to 
hand his native country over to the King of Spain. 
The rebellion in the North, for a time so threatening, 
was begun, as we have seen, without due preparation 
and conducted without ability to an inglorious ter- 
mination.^ But not a little of the blame for the 
miserable fiasco must be laid at the door of de Spes, 
who for months had been holding out hopes — as we see 
now, without authority — that an armed Spanish force 
from Flanders would be ready to support the rising. 
Alas ! English Catholics, even after this first hard 
lesson, had yet to learn that Philip's aid was not so 
lightly given, or given at all, without ample assurance 
that he alone should reap the harvest of success 
without incurring the penalties of failure. 

^ The details of the Northern RebelHon may be followed 
closely in the Calendars of State Papers of the period (Spanish, 
Domestic, Border, and Scottish) ; in the Sadler Papers ; in the 
Bowes Papers (Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569, by Sir 
Cuthbert Sharpe). Wright's Elizabeth Papers, &c. 



CHAPTER VII 
1570-1578 

Desperation of Alba — Fresh Catholic conspiracies — De Spes's com- 
plicity — Alba and the Ridolfi plot — Discovery — The revenge of John 
Hawkins — De Spes outwitted — His expulsion from England — Guaras 
appointed Spanish Agent — Reopening of trade — Guaras' intrigues with 
Mary Stuart and Don Juan of Austria — The plot discovered — Im- 
prisonment of Guaras — Fall of Don Juan — Bernardino de Mendoza 
appointed ambassador in England 

ALBA was driven well nigh to desperation by the 
contemptuous treatment extended to Ciappino 
in England and the evident determination of 
Elizabeth to hold her ground with regard to the 
property she had seized. Something must be done, 
and that quickly, he wrote to the King. If they 
exclude our ships from English ports, even for shelter, 
intercourse by sea between Spain and Flanders must 
cease, and we shall be absolutely obliged to com- 
mence hostilities. "Your Majesty's present urgent 
needs are better known to you than to any one, and 
here the pressure is very great. The past wars, 
the emigration of the people, the stoppage of trade, 
and the general want of confidence here, all convince 
me that a rupture with England at present would 
be most inopportune ; but if the English force it upon 
us, we cannot avoid it ; " and the grim Duke, who had 
drowned Flanders in blood, had tamely to propose 

to his master, as the only way now open to them, 

296 



DESPAIR OF THE SPANIARDS 297 

that Elizabeth should be more mildly treated than 
ever, in the hope that at least she would allow Spanish 
ships to shelter in her ports, whilst the plundered 
Flemish merchants were allowed to go over to 
England unofficially and make the best terms they 
individually could to rescue their property. 

Nor was Philip much more stout-hearted than 
his general. Whilst the northern nobles were yet 
in arms in Yorkshire, he wrote to Alba thus : " Eng- 
lish affairs are going on in a way that may make 
it necessary, after all, to bring that Queen to do by 
force what she refuses to reason. Her duty is so 
plain that doubtless God causes her to ignore it, 
in order that by these means His holy religion may 
be restored in England and the Catholics and good 
Christians rescued from the thraldom in which they 
live. In case her obstinacy and hardness of heart 
should continue, therefore, you will consider the 
best direction to be given to our action. We here 
think that the best course will be to encourage 
with money and secret favour the Catholics of 
the North, and to help those in Ireland to take up 
arms against the heretics, to deliver the crown to 
the Queen of Scots to whom it belongs by suc- 
cession. . . . This is only mentioned at present that 
you may know what is passing in our minds here 
[i.e., in Spain], and that with your great prudence 
and a full consideration of affairs in general, you 
may ponder what is best to be done. What you 
say is very true ; we are beginning to lose prestige 
by delaying so long to provide a remedy for the 
great grievance done by this woman to us."^ 

^ Philip to Alba, i6th December, 1569. — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. ii. 



298 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Mary Stuart, closely watched and in prison, alone 
never lost heart or courage. Norfolk's weak pol- 
troonery, the disastrous collapse of the northern lords, 
the slow hesitancy of Philip, were all met by her 
with confident predictions of coming success, if only 
the King of Spain would take her cause in hand. 
Letter after letter went from her and from the restless 
Bishop of Ross in her name to Philip and Alba. 
" The Queen is in good heart," the Bishop of Ross 
assured de Spes, "and the principal Catholics of 
this country have sent me word not to desist from 
the first intention, for that, as soon as they learn 
that they will have foreign help, and arrangements 
are made for it to reach them, they will rise and stand 
out until this country is Catholic and the succession 
assured to Queen Mary." This was soon after the 
flight of the northern lords (i8th January, 1570), and 
at the same time a warm love correspondence was 
passing between Mary and Norfolk, she with honeyed 
words, and at serious risk to herself, urging him 
not to abandon the great plan that was to make them 
both free and great, ^ though he was still a prisoner 
in the Tower. 

Meanwhile the dangerous attempt at a Catholic 
rebellion in England and the known confidence of 
the Queen of Scots had drawn the Protestants of 
Europe together : a close union existed between 
Elizabeth and the Lutheran Princes of Germany, 
whilst Hans Casimir and other mercenary leaders 
were raising troops subsidised by England and the 
Huguenots to renew the religious war in France. 
The privateers in the Channel were more aggressive 

^ These letters are in Labanoff and in the Hardwick State 
Papers. 



DE SPES STILL PLOTTING 299 

than ever, and Cardinal Chatillon still flaunted his 
unecclesiastical equipment at the English Court. 
Hardly a letter was written by de Spes at the time 
(1570) that does not contain some suggestion for 
striking at Elizabeth's power. The Queen of Scots 
might be captured by a coup de main and carried 
off to Spain, as she herself suggested ; the Bishop 
of Ross assures him that a few Spanish troops landed 
in Scotland might easily overturn the new Regent 
Lennox; I a small force sent to aid the Irish rebels 
would enable them to expel the English ; '* and it 
looks as if the enterprise might be effected in both 
islands at the same time, for in Ireland most of the 
nation will rise as soon as they see your Majesty's 
flag on the coast, and no resistance would be made 
except in Dublin and the fortresses." 

To all these suggestions of his intemperate am- 
bassador Philip had still no answer but to enjoin 
prudence and secrecy. Information, pledges, assur- 
ances without end were requested, whilst Philip 
pondered and considered. Everything was referred 
to the Duke of Alba for decision, and Alba would not 
move without specific orders ; whilst in this deadlock 
the Spanish commerce was swept from the seas and 
the legendary power of the Catholic King was made 
a mock and derision of the heretics. Once Philip's 
hands were nearly forced by the impatience of Mary's 
friends. The more extreme school of English and 
Scottish Catholics had been urging for some time 
that a Papal Bull of Deprivation against Elizabeth 
should be obtained, in order that Mary's immediate 
claim to the Crown of England might be regularised. 
Philip had gently put aside all such requests or left 
* The Regent Murray had just been murdered. 



300 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

them unanswered. He was not yet ready for 
Elizabeth's forcible deposition ; for, as we have seen, 
his cumbrous methods forbade prompt action, and 
he had no intention of ousting Elizabeth until he 
had made himself quite certain that he, and he alone, 
would be master of England under her successor. 
But the action of the Scottish and Guisan Catholics 
in Rome, greatly to Philip's annoyance, procured 
the Bull from the Pope over Philip's head ; and de 
Spes's chaplain, Father Berga, doubtless with the full 
connivance of the ambassador, who was apparently 
incapable of understanding high politics, persuaded 
John Felton to court martyrdom by fixing the Pope's 
Bull on the Bishop of London's door on Corpus Christi 
Day late in May, 1570. De Spes, in the innocence 
of his heart, wrote off in jubilant strain to Philip, 
recording the event and foretelling all sorts of great 
consequences from it. But the King had nothing 
but condemnation and annoyance that his plans 
should thus be interfered with by the meddling of 
priests, and de Spes had to read some very plain 
talk from his master, whilst the share of his fugitive 
chaplain in the outrage still further brought the 
ambassador and his master into the black books 
of Elizabeth. 

The bold action of Felton, however, frightened 
the Government into a milder attitude towards the 
moderate English Catholics, and the mustering of 
a strong fleet in Spanish Flanders, for the purpose 
of conveying to Spain Philip's fourth wife, Anna of 
Austria, heightened the alarm. Elizabeth was so 
much perturbed that she kept her room for days 
together, bewailing the vengeance that she thought 
at last was about to fall upon her for all her 



ELIZABETH'S ALARM 301 

provocations of her brother-in-law. Cecil (now Lord 
Burghley) appears to have been the great object of 
his mistress's wrath. To him, she cried, alone was 
due the trouble in which she found herself. Here, 
thanks to Cecil's policy, she said, was a great army 
and fleet ready to attack her in the Channel, and 
Philip was causing another force to be mustered in 
Spain under the traitor Stukeley to invade Ireland. 
But this was only a momentary weakness, which 
even steadfast Burghley himself shared to the 
extremity of preparing for timely flight with such 
portable property as he could gather. ^ The un- 
wonted fit of despair did not last long. English 
forces were got together rapidly, the English con- 
servative and moderate Catholics were conciliated, 
and the Duke of Norfolk was released from the 
Tower to only nominal arrest in his own house ; 
for if the conservative nobles of his party considered 
themselves absolved by the Pope's Bull from their 
oath of allegiance to the Queen, then, indeed, might 
Elizabeth tremble. This was on the 4th August, 
and, on the 23rd June previous, the Duke of Norfolk 
had made in writing the most abject submission to 
the Queen, pledging himself " freely, voluntarily, 
and absolutely, by my allegiance to your Majesty, 
my Sovereign Lady, never to offend your Highness, 
but do utterly renounce and revoke all that which 
on my part any wise hath passed, with a full in- 
tention never to deal in that cause of marriage 
with the Queen of Scots, nor in any other cause 
belonging to her." 2 Even Mary herself was now 
smiled upon by Elizabeth, and negotiations for a 

^ Antonio de Guaras to Secretary Zayas. — Spanish Calendar. 
« Haynes State Papers. 



302 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

reconciliation were opened with her ; for the Spanish 
fleet was still in English waters, and a peace between 
the warring parties had been patched up in France. 

With these numerous signs of yielding on the part 
of the Protestants, it is not surprising that the Spanish 
partisans should pluck up courage. De Spes, raging 
with wounded pride at the indignities continually- 
heaped upon him, I all of which, Philip told him, he 
must bear patiently, never ceased to plot with the 
Bishop of Ross and Mary Stuart. On the 2nd 
September he wrote to Philip details of another 
dangerous conspiracy that had been broached to 
him by Mary through the Bishop of Ross. The 
Catholics, he said, feeling themselves now absolved 
from their allegiance to Elizabeth by the Pope's 
Bull, were willing to rise. The sons of the Earl 
of Derby and the gentry of Lancashire were ready 
to release Mary — one of the Earl of Shrewsbury's 
sons having also been brought into the plan, which 
would make it easy, as Mary was in Shrewsbury's 
keeping. This combination looked askance at Norfolk 
as a doubtful Catholic and a backslider, though it was 
joined by his kinsmen Arundel and Lumley, as well 
as by the thoroughgoing Catholics, Southampton, 

^ He was made to vacate Winchester House " because it had 
too many doors " ; and on the loth August two of the City 
aldermen came to him with an order to proceed to Saint 
Albans to meet a Committee of the Council, who wished to 
discuss his proceedings with him. He went as requested, but 
refused to discuss anything until the Queen would receive him, 
which she had refused to do since his disgrace. He was 
confident even now that they would soon expel him with 
ignominy. He was no longer an ambassador, said Leicester, 
but a spy, and the sooner he was gone the better. — Spanish 
Calendar, vol. ii. 



NORFOLK PLOTS AGAIN 303 

Worcester, and Montagu (Sir Anthony Browne). 
The plan now. advanced was for a Spanish fleet to 
go to the Stanley country, the Isle of Man, or the 
Lancashire coast, and carry Mary Stuart thence to 
safety. The scheme, however, was thrown away by 
the kidnapping and forcible abduction to England 
of Dr. Story, the English Catholic Agent in Antwerp, 
who upon the rack had torn from him all he knew, 
which was not much, of the communications on the 
subject that had passed between Mary Stuart's friends 
and the Duke of Alba. The ostentatious but insincere 
negotiations going on between Elizabeth and the 
Queen of Scots, and the redoubled vigilance of Cecil's 
Government, completed the impracticability of this 
scheme, and then once more Norfolk took the lead. 
On the 15th October de Spes wrote to the King 
that approaches were being made by the French to 
marry the young Duke of Anjou to Mary, this, of 
course, being one of Catharine's tricks to frustrate the 
Spanish attempts to dominate Britain through the 
Queen of Scots. " It may be," says de Spes, "that 
the Queen [Mary] will consent, but it will not please 
the majority of the English people, and it certainly 
does not please me. The Catholics are not very much 
in favour of the marriage with the Duke of Norfolk, 
as they are uncertain about his orthodoxy, although 
Arundel and Lumley assert that he will be obedient to 
the Church. His desire to reign may well lead him 
from bad paths to good ones. The Duke [of Norfolk] 
himself has been very cool about this marriage, but he 
now seems to wish to renew the project, particularly 
as he expects shortly to be quite at liberty, in accord- 
ance with the Queen's promise to him. If your 
Majesty's wishes are to be represented . . . the 



304 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Bishop of Ross will be a good negotiator, and I could 
conduct the matter with him or with Ridolfi, who has 
been in communication with them ; and if it should be 
necessary for the Duke of Norfolk to bind himself 
separately to other conditions, steps may be taken at 
once in the matter. Pray your Majesty send me 
orders, for it is certain that the release and marriage 
of the Queen of Scots carries with it the tranquil- 
lisation of Flanders and the restoration of religion 
in this country." 

Philip, in answer to this and many similar hints, had 
nothing but vague expressions of sympathy to send in 
reply, with fresh orders to his ambassador to follow 
strictly the instructions of the Duke of Alba. For 
months, until the Spanish fleet had passed harmlessly 
down Channel, the hollow negotiations between 
Elizabeth and Mary went on, and a similar pretence 
of conferences with regard to the reopening of trade 
with the Duke of Alba, whilst Elizabeth checkmated 
the French advances to Mary Stuart by herself 
suddenly displaying a desire to marry the boy Duke 
of Anjou. " They think," wrote de Spes early in 
February, 1571, "that with this talk about the 
marriage of the Queen [Elizabeth] with the Duke of 
Anjou we shall be afraid to offend them, and the 
pirates are more welcomed than ever, whilst the Queen 
of Scot's business is being delayed. It is true that so 
far as the Catholics are concerned matters were never 
more favourable than now. I did not dare to accept 
their offers, in the face of the Duke of Alba's instruc- 
tions ; but whenever his Majesty wishes, a great 
service can be done to God, and at the same time the 
safety of the Netherlands secured and the throne of 
Spain aggrandised. The position of the King's 



NORFOLK'S NEW PLOT 305 

ambassador here does not add much to his dignity. 
... I have suffered more than can be imagined." ^ 
De Spes had his personal grudge as well as his 
Catholic zeal now to spur him on to vengeance. The 
irresponsiveness of his master and of Alba to the 
repeated suggestions that armed aid should be sent to 
the English Catholics suggested for the first time a 
viler method by which Elizabeth, the main obstacle to 
the Anglo-Spanish alliance, might be removed. The 
above letter is different from any that had preceded it, 
and was written privately, not to the King, as usual, 
but to his Secretary, Zayas. A " great service might 
be done to God whenever his Majesty wished." It 
was no longer dependent, apparently, upon the ability 
of Philip to send large armed forces, though they 
might be needed later to hold the conquest. 

We will see from other sources what this new feature 
in the plan was. Two days after de Spes wrote the 
above letter, on the 8th February, 1571, Mary, who 
had learnt that the ambassador could do nothing, as 
he says, but refer the conspirators to the Duke of 
Alba, wrote as follows to the Bishop of Ross. 2 After 
saying that she would, as soon as she was released, go 
to Spain and throw herself entirely upon the protection 
of Philip, she proceeds : " I would advise to send some 
faithful man towards the King of Spain whom he 
might trust, to make him understand the state of my 
realm, and also of the friends I have here, their de- 
liberations and the means they may have to set them- 
selves to the fields and saist [i.e., obtain possession] 
them of me, if the said King of Spain will embrace 

^ De Spes to Secretary Zayas, 6th February, 1571. — Spanish 
Calendar, vol. ii. 

' The letter is in the Cotton MSS., Caligula, c. 11, p. 469. 



3o6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

and sustain my cause and theirs. I think Ridolfi may 
best acquit himself of this charge securely . . . under 
colour of his own traffic." She continues by saying 
that Philip's fears of Norfolk's orthodoxy must be 
banished. " I see no other means but to assure them 
of the Duke, for that is the knot of the matter. My 
whole hope is in the Catholics of this realm." When 
the Bishop of Ross transmitted this proposal to 
Norfolk the latter at once acquiesced in the despatch 
of Ridolfi to Flanders, Spain, and Rome,^ for the 
purpose of demanding aid to seize and depose 
Elizabeth ; and on the loth March de Spes wrote to the 
King, ** The Queen of Scotland, the Duke of Norfolk, 
and the Catholic leaders have wisely resolved to send 
a gentleman to your Majesty, who will see the Duke 
of Alba first, but without the knowledge of the French. 
I have, after much difficulty, obtained a copy of his 
instructions, and send them herewith." 

On the 25th March Ridolfi was ready to start, and 
de Spes wrote to Philip: "The Queen of Scots and 
the Duke of Norfolk, in the names of many other 
lords and gentlemen attached to your Majesty's 
interests, and the promotion of the Catholic faith, are 
sending Rodolfo Ridolfi, a Florentine gentleman, to 
offer their services to your Majesty, and to represent 
to you that the time is now ripe to take a step of 
great benefit to Christendom, as Ridolfi will set forth 
to your Majesty. The letter of credence from the 
Duke [of Norfolk] is written in the cipher that I sent 
Zayas, in case the letter is intercepted . . . ; " whilst to 
Secretary Zayas, de Spes wrote at the same time : " The 
bearer is Rodolfo Ridolfi, whom the Queen of Scots and 
the Duke of Norfolk are sending to his Majesty. . . . 

^ Depositions of Ross and Barker. — State Trials. 



RIDOLFI SENT TO SPAIN 307 

It is necessary that he should have audience of his 
Majesty with the utmost secrecy, as you will be able 
to arrange, on so important a matter as this." ^ Almost 
simultaneously Henry Cobham was sent to Spain by 
Elizabeth in order ostensibly to negotiate direct about 
the seizures, but really to ascertain how far Philip was 
helping the Irish rebels, and de Spes does not conceal 
his glee that "these thieves and pirates" will find, 
" though they send ambassadors and play their old 
tricks," and he (de Spes) " is still mixing his words 
with honey," "all this will not hinder what his 
Majesty will decide to do." ^ 

^ Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 

^ Cobham arrived in Madrid in May, when Alba's memo- 
randum on Ridolfi's mission was in Philip's hands. As was 
usual in English affairs, Feria was one of those asked to report 
on Cobham's mission. He and his colleagues recommend that 
Cobham should be curtly dismissed, and the English again 
referred to Alba for the discussion of the trade dispute, and 
this course was taken. An extremely interesting letter was 
written by Feria to the King's Secretary, Zayas, which is full of 
bitterness that his former advice as to England had not been 
taken. Amongst other things, Feria writes : " I understand that 
our object is to keep friendly with England because it is not at 
present possible to undertake the subjection of that country and 
Ireland. We were lords of it once and left it. The friendship 
will be difficult to maintain if the Sovereign be not a Catholic 
and our hold upon the Netherlands less firm. The Queen sees 
our weakness and assails us with inventions and fears that she 
vifill marry in France. She will no more marry Anjou than she 
will marry me. ... If Cobham is not dealt with in dignified 
fashion I fear that our efforts to avoid war vi^ill only bring it 
upon us, and we shall find suddenly some day that we have lost 
the Catholics, and even they will take up arms against us. When 
the Queen once understands that the Catholics depend upon our 
King she will not dare to break with us. There is no other way 
out of it. For the last two years we have trodden the path of 
feebleness ; let us now try the other road." — Feria to Zayas, 
loth May, 1571, Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 



3o8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Ridolfi arrived in Brussels at the beginning of April, 
and his mission was discussed exhaustively by Alba 
and his Council. The long report which xAlba there- 
upon sent to Philip is a State paper of the highest 
interest, because it not only sets forth fully the 
whole position, but for the first time formulates clearly 
the plan of murdering Elizabeth as a political measure. 
We have traced in previous pages how the provoca- 
tion had grown, how the powerlessness of the Spaniards 
to vindicate their prestige and their interests had em- 
bittered them. In all the previous suggestions for the 
substitution of Mary Stuart for Elizabeth on the 
English throne, it is true that there could have been 
little doubt as to what would have been the fate of 
the deposed Queen at the hands of the victors ; but 
in Alba's minute to Philip the killing of Elizabeth as 
a preliminary measure is recommended as a condition 
of Spanish support. Alba sets forth with great pro- 
lixity the pros and cons of the position, the saintly 
character of the objects, the liberation of the captive 
Mary, and the restoration of the faith in England. 
Norfolk, he says, will undertake to rise and hold his 
own country for forty days after liberating the Queen 
of Scots if Philip will promise before the expiration 
of that time to send him 6,000 arquebusiers. He 
has means, he says, to seize the Tower of London 
and secure the person of Elizabeth, and he and Mary 
will look alone to the King of Spain for guidance. 
Alba, as usual, is full of doubts, limitations, and mis- 
givings. Suppose after the Spanish aid had been 
sent the enterprise were to fail ! Not only would the 
Queen of Scots and Norfolk lose their heads, but the 
Catholic religion would be utterly crushed thence- 
forward in England, and Elizabeth would throw 



TO MURDER ELIZABETH 309 

herself entirely into the hands of France. Ridolfi, too, 
seemed to Alba rather a talkative person for such a 
mission. He had to pass through France : what if 
he opened his mouth too wide there, or in Rome ? 
Besides, the Pope himself was rather too fond of 
consulting French Cardinals. . . . 

And so on, and so forth, until at last Alba gives to 
Philip his final recommendation. Ridolfi was to be 
warned that the French must have nothing whatever 
to do with the affair, and he was to be sent on his way 
to Rome and Madrid. The King is recommended to 
embark the 6,000 m_en required for England in the 
fleet being prepared in Spain to bring out the new 
Governor of Flanders, Medina Celi ; but that on no 
account should the aid he sent to England on the 
conditions proposed by Norfolk and Mary, for fear of 
failure. "But in case that the Queen of England 
should first have died, either of a natural death or 
otherwise, or the confederates had seized and secured 
her person without your Majesty having had anything 
to do with it, then I should find no objection whatever 
to it, for the affair would be quite on another footing." 
" Everything," added Alba, " should be prepared 
secretly in Flanders, but no move should be made 
until Elizabeth was dead, naturally or otherwise. As 
soon as that happened your Majesty ought not to miss 
such a fine opportunity to attain the end desired — the 
restoration of our holy Catholic faith and the future 
tranquillity of your dominions." ^ 

Whilst Ridolfi, duly warned to be secret, went on 
his way to Rome, where the Pope heartily blessed his 
mission, and thence to Madrid, where he arrived in 

^ MSS. Simancas, Estado 823. Portions of the document are 
reproduced by Mignet. 



3IO TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

the last days of June, evil fell upon the project in Eng- 
land. The Flemish Secretary of the Bishop of Ross, 
Charles Bailly, had accompanied Ridolfi to Flanders, 
in order to bring back news of the reception of 
Norfolk's proposals by Alba. The latter had, of 
course, not gone beyond general approval in his 
intercourse with Ridolfi, the murder condition being 
reserved for Philip's own consideration ; but he had 
said enough to prove conclusively that he regarded 
with sympathy, and hoped to aid, a project intended 
to depose Elizabeth in favour of Mary and Norfolk. 
Bailly wrote letters in cipher at Ridolfi's dictation, 
giving Alba's provisional answers to the Bishop of 
Ross and two other correspondents identified by 
numbers only. Bailly, who had been closely watched 
by Cecil's spies in Flanders, carried the letters to 
England himself, and on the 15th April de Spes 
reports to the King that this man had been stopped at 
Dover and his packets taken from him. The letters 
he bore were in cipher, which of itself was suspicious ; 
but in addition to this, every movement of Ridolfi in 
Brussels was known to Elizabeth's Government, and 
the Secretary's coming had been looked for. The 
packet of letters was given into the custody of Lord 
Cobham, the Governor of Dover Castle, until the 
Council in London should send instructions, whilst the 
unhappy youth, Bailly, was sent to the Marshalsea in 
Southwark pending inquiries. 

The Cobhams belonged to the party of conservative 
nobles, ready to turn against Elizabeth the moment 
she was in danger, and by a trick of one of the 
younger brothers, Thomas — they were notoriously a 
turbulent lot — the precious packet of letters was 
spirited away to the Spanish ambassador in London 



ARREST OF BAILLY 311 

and a dummy packet substituted for it. When this 
was opened with great anticipation before the Queen's 
Council in London, to their dismay they found nothing 
but a confused jumble written in the same cipher. 
But they were not to be baulked. At least they had 
Charles Bailly safe under lock and bars, and the rack 
might induce him to talk. He began by making a 
grave mistake, writing letters — of course intercepted — 
to the Bishop of Ross that, now that the real letters had 
reached their destination without being deciphered, 
they had nothing to fear ; that though they tore him 
to pieces on the rack he would confess nothing ; and 
he begged the Bishop to tell him what answers he 
should give to his examiners. The Bishop, claiming 
ecclesiastical and diplomatic immunity, was just as 
imprudent as his secretary, urging him to stand firm 
and defy the English and gain the lasting gratitude of 
Mary. The poor wretch knew little of the details of 
Ridolfi's mission, but he had written the cipher 
letters he bore ; and gradually the agony of torture 
wrung from him all he knew. ^ Every day he sent 
fresh appealing letters to the Bishop of Ross, with the 
only result at length of lodging the Bishop himself in 
the Tower, threatened with the rack, notwithstanding 
his mitre and diplomatic position. Bailly deposed 
that Alba had received Ridolfi favourably, and had sent 
him on to Rome and Madrid to demand armed help 
in England for the two persons whose identity had 
been concealed by numbers. 

For some time the authorities could get no further 
than this. Of course they knew that the two persons 

^ The whole of the depositions will be found in the Hatfield 
Papers Historical MSS. Commission, and the circumstances 
are related in the Spanish Calendar. 



312 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

unnamed were Mary and Norfolk, but they needed 
legal proof, and gradually Cecil's net was widened and 
swept into gaol one after the other of the confidants 
and tools of the plotters. In August a false follower 
of Norfolk brought to the Council a bag of ^600 
with a cipher letter that had been entrusted to him 
by Norfolk's secretary to forward to Lord Herries, 
the leader of Mary's Catholic friends in Scotland. 
Curiously enough this sum of money had been 
received from the French ambassador, so it is clear 
that Mary and Norfolk were playing false and doing 
what Alba dreaded most, namely, bringing the French 
into the business. But this fact made matters no 
better from the point of view of the English Council, 
and suddenly the Duke of Norfolk, the first noble 
in England, found himself in prison with all his confi- 
dential servants. The torture did its fell work promptly, 
and the secrets of the underlings were drawn from 
them, implicating the Duke beyond redemption. The 
Bishop of Ross, seeing his most secret papers de- 
ciphered, became almost loquacious in his fright, and 
went out of his way to vituperate his unhappy 
mistress. 

Norfolk collapsed as abjectly as before. He had 
hoped at first, he said, to wed Mary by Elizabeth's 
permission. He was sorry and repentant for having 
acted so falsely after he had promised not to do so, and 
would never do it again. He had not really been a 
Catholic, he said, and now submitted himself entirely 
to her Majesty's mercy. He had never, he solemnly 
avowed, intended to bring foreign troops into England, 
or to touch the sacred person of his revered sovereign. 
It was all the fault of the Bishop of Ross, of Mary, 
of anybody but himself, . . . and so, with such sorry 



NORFOLK CONDEMNED 313 

lies as this, the most beloved and highest noble In 
England whined for mercy and his bare life. Elizabeth 
was loath to sacrifice him, for he was her cousin and 
the head of a powerful group of Englishmen, but at 
length the Protestant influences around her were too 
strong for her to resist, and Norfolk's head fell on 
Tower Hill on the 2nd June, 1572. 

Before this happened, Philip's Council in Madrid 
had exhaustively discussed Alba's recommendation 
that the murder of Elizabeth should precede the 
sending of Spanish forces to England. They not 
only approved fully of it, but laid down that the act 
should be committed, not in London, but whilst the 
Queen was on a progress. Much sanctimonious talk 
there was in the Council about the sacredness of the 
cause excusing the means, and even the Pope's Nuncio 
smiled upon the nefarious plan and called it righteous. 
As for Philip himself, he was perfectly willing, and 
said that the whole thing now turned upon the ability 
to get the money together for the purpose, "and it 
would be a great pity to miss so important a matter 
for so small an amount, as later it would cost so much 
more." ^ It is probably true, as was urged for them, 
that neither Mary nor Norfolk consented in so 
many words to this openly avowed condition of the 
Spaniards to make the prior murder of Elizabeth 
a condition of armed aid being sent from Flanders. 
The proposal was certainly not contained in the 
instructions carried by Ridolfi from Norfolk, though It. 
Is, in my opinion, indicated In the letter from de Spes 
to Zayas of 25th March quoted on an earlier page. 
It is first put clearly In black and white by Alba 

^ Simancas MSS., Minuta de Consejo, Estado 823. It will 
be seen on a subsequent page that the money, 200,000 crowns, 
was found. 



314 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

himself, and warmly adopted by Philip and his 
Council. But though Mary and Norfolk were not 
therefore necessarily parties to the proposed crime, 
there can be no doubt in the mind of any reasonable 
person what would have befallen Elizabeth if success 
had attended the attempt, and Norfolk had carried out 
the pledge he gave to Alba to seize the Tower of 
London and secure the person of the Queen. 

We have here, however, not to deal with the culpa- 
bility of the English actors so much as with that of 
the Catholic King, so full of saintly professions and so 
devoutly pious himself, who in his helplessness and 
desperation was willing at last, in order to extricate 
himself from a political impasse, to consent to treason 
and murder as a means to righteousness. In the 
letter Philip wrote to de Spes (4th August, 1 571)— in 
ignorance, of course, of the collapse of the plot — he 
conveys his intention to patronise the murder of 
Elizabeth in the following characteristic words : 
" After carrying the whole question before Almighty 
God, whose cause it is, and in whom we trust for the 
guidance and direction of the affair better than human 
prudence can effect or understand, since the object is 
entirely, purely, and simply directed to His glory and 
service and the exaltation of His holy faith, I have 
resolved to adopt the course which you will learn from 
the Duke of Alba, to whom I write about it at great 
length. In conformity therewith and the orders he 
will give to you, you will act In the business with the 
discretion, dexterity, suavity and prudence which we 
expect of you, keeping in close communication with the 
Duke (of Alba) and carrying out his orders explicitly." 'f 

^ Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. Even after Philip knew that the 
plot had failed and that Norfolk was in the Tower, he did not 



FAILURE OF THE MURDER PLOT 315 

As the damning facts were gradually wrung out of 
the miserable accomplices in the plot, during the 
summer and autumn of 1571 the position of de Spes 
became daily more impossible in England. His name 
was constantly cropping up in the depositions, and 
every deponent had some evidence to give of his 
activity in forwarding this conspiracy to overturn the 
Government to which he was accredited. Even then, 
semi-prisoner as he was, and himself in danger of 
punishment or ignominious expulsion, he never ceased 
to plot ; and his eagerness made him and his master 
an easy prey to an amusing piece of successful mystifi- 
cation that any person less blinded by hate than he 

abandon his hopes — for he was tenacious when once he had 
laboriously made up his mind. In the instructions given to the 
Duke of Medina Celi in November, 1571, when he was going to 
succeed Alba in the Netherlands, the King writes as follows : 
"As regards England you will proceed in conformity with what 
was communicated to you here and the Duke of Alba's informa- 
tion, although I do not think there will be much to do at present, 
as the Queen has got scent of the business and has arrested the 
Duke of Norfolk and the principal people concerned. She has 
also made the Queen of Scotland's prison straiter, and de Spes 
writes to me on the 21st October that they are all in great peril, 
for which I am very sorry, though I still have confidence that 
God, whose cause it is, will help us to forward the matter as we 
wish. You will therefore hold yourself ready, in case the Duke 
of Alba write to you at sea, to take any step with this end : in 
accordance with Clause iv. of your instructions. I have thought 
well to repeat it in this letter, which for greater security you will 
burn before you embark'^ (the words in italics have been added 
in the King's own hand). Medina Celi is told that 200,000 
crowns, half in gold, will be handed to him for the English 
business, and must not on any account be used for any other 
purpose, " but for this Enghsh affair, v^rhich I sincerely hope that 
God will guide in some unexpected way for the good of His 
cause." — Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 349. 



3i6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

would have seen through at once. It will be recollected 
that John Hawkins's trading expedition to Central 
America had been treacherously attacked by a superior 
Spanish force at St. Juan de Lua, Mexico, in October, 
1568, Hawkins with difficulty escaping with only two 
tiny ships. Property of great value and over a 
hundred men had been captured by the Spaniards and 
sent to Seville, the unfortunate sailors being delivered 
to the Inquisition and condemned to slavery. John 
Hawkins was the last man in the world to reconcile 
himself tamely to such a loss ; and through a Catholic 
friend of his, George Fitzwilliam, a kinsman of the 
Duchess of Feria, he opened negotiations in Spain for 
the release of his sailors and the return of his property, 
on condition that he deserted the English service with 
the Queen's fleet of fourteen armed ships, and joined 
that of the King of Spain for the invasion of England 
in favour of Mary Stuart. 

Poor Mary, as usual, was easily hoodwinked, as 
indeed was Fitzwilliam himself at first, and the Ferias 
eagerly listened to the suggestion of apostasy of such 
a man as John Plawkins. Fitzwilliam returned to 
London from Spain with an encouraging answer and 
tokens for the Queen of Scots, in order that she might 
be asked to assure the Ferias and Philip of the 
genuineness of Hawkins's offer. Cecil, who was behind 
Hawkins in the whole negotiation and enjoyed the 
position almost as much as the great sailor, smoothed 
over the difficulties of access to Mary, who, only too 
ready to believe in the honesty of others, sent him 
back to Spain with all sorts of assurances, letters for 
Philip and the Ferias, and a beautiful missal bound in 
gold for the Duchess of Feria, wherein she had 
written "'Absit nobis gloriari nisi in cruce Domini nostri 



JOHN HAWKINS'S REVENGE 317 

Jesu Christi. — Marie R^ When Fitzwilliam came to 
him, de Spes was easily drawn into the plan, and 
became enthusiastically certain of the bond fides of 
Hawkins. The more he sees of him, he says, the 
more convinced he is of his honesty. He is a 
Catholic, and very ambitious ; and only once, and then 
but for a moment, did the gullible ambassador some- 
what distrust Cecil's complaisancy in allowing Fitz- 
william easy access to Mary Stuart, and to run 
backwards and forwards unimpeded between England 
and the coast of Spain. 

Fitzwilliam again returned early in September to 
England entirely successful in his mission, and 
Hawkins wrote full of glee to Lord Burghley. The 
King and the Duke of Feria had jumped at 
Hawkins's offer, his sailors had all been released 
and embarked for England, and the agreement 
between Hawkins and the Spaniards with orders 
for a great sum of money to be paid to Hawkins 
had been sent to de Spes, who was to forward the 
enterprise with all diligence. " The design is," wrote 
Hawkins, "that my power should join with the Duke 
of Alba's power, which he doth secretly provide in 
Flanders, as well as with the power which cometh 
with the Duke of Medina from Spain, and so all 
together to invade this realm and set up the Queen 
of Scots. They have practised with us for the burn- 
ing of Her Majesty's ships ; therefore there should be 
some good care had of them ; but not so as to appear 
that anything is discovered. . . . The King hath 
sent a ruby of good price to the Queen of Scots, with 
letters also, which in my judgment were good to 
be delivered. The letters be of no importance, but 
his message by word is to comfort her and say that he 



3i8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

hath now none other care than to place her in her 
own. It were good, also, that the ambassador (de 
Spes) did make request unto your Lordship that Fitz- 
william may have access to the Queen of Scots to 
render thanks to her for the delivery of our prisoners 
[^i.e., in Spain] now at liberty. It will be a good 
colour for your Lordship to confer with him more 
largely. I have sent your Lordship a copy of my 
pardon from the King of Spain, in the very order and 
manner I have it. The Duke of Medina and the 
Duke of Alba hath, each, one of the same pardons 
more amplified to present to me ; although this be 
large enough ! with very great titles and honours from 
the King : from which God deliver me ! . . . Their 
practices be very mischievous, and they be never idle. 
But God I hope will confound them and turn their 
devices upon their own necks." ^ 

There was no limit to the credulity of de Spes. 
The great sum of money passed from him to 
Hawkins, but though the fourteen ships that the latter 
had promised to the King of Spain came not, for the 
discovery of the Ridolfi treason upset for the time the 
whole plan of murder and invasion, the ambassador 
never lost faith in Hawkins and Fitzwilliam. Norfolk 
was condemned to death, Mary Stuart, herself in 
closer confinement than ever, was in dire danger of 
the block, de Spes threatened and insulted hourly, and 
his henchman, Luis de Paz, haled to prison, and 
Antonio de Guaras, his close friend, not daring to 
leave his house for many months together, and yet 
de Spes firmly believed that John Hawkins, an 
Englishman if ever there was one, was only waiting 
the signal from the King of Spain to desert with the 

^ Scottish State Papers, Mary, vol. vi. 



EXPULSION OF DE SPES 319 

English fleet and join his country's enemies. At 
length, on the 14th December, Elizabeth determined 
she would have no more of de Spes. His complicity 
in the Ridolfi plot had been made absolutely clear ; 
his pernicious activity had been watched for three 
years, and every effort had been made to drive him 
out of England without avail. So, on the 14th Decem- 
ber, 1 57 1, the Lords of the Council summoned him 
to Westminster. Lord Burghley spoke and told him 
that repeated requests had been made to the King of 
Spain to withdraw him, and now the Queen wished to 
know when he was going, as she did not want him in 
England. De Spes replied defiantly that he knew 
nothing about her wants. When he received proper 
instructions from his own Sovereign to go he would 
go, and not before. 

A long statement of all his misdeeds in England 
was then read to him in Spanish, to which he replied 
that much of it was false, and he desired to send 
an answer to it. "Oh no! " quoth Cecil, "your King 
would have no reply from Dr. Man, and our Queen 
will have none from you." Then, after a few more 
heated words, the ambassador was told roughly that 
he would have to leave England in three days, and in 
the meanwhile he would be in charge of Henry 
Knollys. Could he send a, courier to his King.-^ he 
asked. No ; that would take too long, he was told. 
To the Duke of Alba, then ? Certainly not ; they 
cared nothing for the Duke of Alba, replied Burghley. 
"It was impossible to leave," objected de Spes, " until 
I send and get money from Antwerp to pay my debts." 
"We will lend you the money you need," replied Cecil; 
and at last de Spes had to make the best of it. 
Lagging on the road as long as he could upon all 



320 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

sorts of pretexts, his servants imprisoned and he him- 
self threatened and insulted at every step, the 
ambassador of Spain was at last hustled out of Eng- 
land, fuming with rage and full of hare-brained projects 
by which, with the help of Hawkins, the King of 
Spain might be avenged on the heretic Queen and 
become the master of England. 

The Huguenots were now in unrestrained power in 
France, and Elizabeth, as usual when she was in fear 
of Spain, was carrying on a desperate flirtation with 
the Duke of Anjou, and surpassing herself in her 
blandishment to Catharine de Medici. Simultaneously 
with the expulsion of de Spes from England, the 
Spanish ambassador in Paris, Don Frances de Alava, 
found France similarly uncongenial to him ; for he 
had been plotting against the Huguenots as de Spes 
had plotted against the Protestants, and had fled in 
disguise to Flanders, so that Philip found himself 
alienated both from England and France at the same 
time, a position that always made him uneasy, especi- 
ally now that not only a marriage but a national 
alliance was in full negotiation between Elizabeth and 
Catharine.^ For the next six months the farcical 

I That Elizabeth intended the expulsion of de Spes, and her 
refusal to continue negotiations about the seizures, to be a 
political demonstration to show her power and impress her new 
friends the French, is seen by her conversation at this time 
(December, 1571) with Cavalcanti, Catharine de Medici's 
confidential envoy. The King of Spain, she said, thought that 
he could separate her from the aUiance with France at any 
time ; but however accommodating he might show himself in 
the negotiations about the seizures, and however ready to 
agree to terms favourable to the English, she would never trust 
Spaniards again, seeing the trouble they had prepared for her 
in Ridolfi's plots with the Pope. The King of France might see 
how little she cared for the King of Spain by the way she had 



ELIZABETH'S DIPLOMACY 321 

political courtship of the young Duke of Alen^on, the 
boy brother of Anjou and the King of France, was 
carried on furiously by the middle-aged Queen of 
England as an antidote for the unappeasable anger of 
Spain. But with her usual diplomacy, now that she 
had worked her will in everything, Elizabeth thought 
best not to drive Philip into violent courses against 
her. She had seized his million ducats and all the 
property of his subjects in England, she had 
unmasked all his plots, had expelled his ambas- 
sador, flouted his great viceroy Alba, her subjects 
had harried Spanish ships on every sea, and helped 
unchecked the Dutch rebels who defied him ; but she 
did not wish to go to war with him if she could help 
it, especially if she could gain all she wanted without 
doing so. 

When the Spanish ambassador in Paris was about 
to escape, Walsingham, the English ambassador, 
had gone and congratulated him upon the great 
naval victory over the Turks in the Mediterranean 
that King Philip's brother, Don Juan, had just 
gained at Lepanto ; and then, after asking many 
curious questions about Don Juan, Walsingham had 
said to Don Francds, as if in joke, " This sounds like 
a marriage, does it not ^ " The Spaniard retorted in 
the same tone, "Yes; let you and I manage it 
together." With this opening Walsingham became 
serious, and enlarged upon Elizabeth's personal 

ordered his ambassador to be gone without delay. She wished 
Cavalcanti could have seen him actually on the road, but with 
some pretext about wanting money he was here for a day or 
two longer. She could assure him, however, that he should not 
stay in her country, and she cared not whether another came or 
not. — Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 



322 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

obligations and liking for her Spanish brother-in-law, 
and the turpitude of certain ministers in sowing dis- 
cord between them. If it were not for the obstacle of 
religion, he continued, the marriage hinted at might 
take place. It was, of course, mere talk, and was 
intended to be no more ; but Walsingham spoke with 
a purpose, and knew that his mistress thought it time 
to repair some of the broken ties that held her country 
to Spain. 

More marked and authoritative approaches were 
made simultaneously in England itself. The man 
who had been instructed by Alba to keep an eye 
on Spanish affairs unofficially when de Spes left 
England was Antonio de Guaras, an Aragonese 
merchant living on Dowgate Hill, Thames Street. 
He had been established in London for many years 
as a prosperous importer of Spanish produce, and had 
a perfect craze for writing descriptions of public events 
and taking part in public affairs ; a zealous busybody, 
whose flamboyant patriotism and Catholicism had 
made him the friend and companion of successive 
Spanish ambassadors, especially of de Spes. In the 
anti-Catholic excitement in May, 1569, his house had 
been raided by the officers of the law deputed to 
destroy superstitious images, and a considerable stock 
of church ornaments of this description seized. One 
half of the stock was piled into a heap before Guaras' 
door and burnt, the other half being similarly treated 
by the Standard in Cheapside ; whilst the people, who 
only a dozen years before, under Mary, had been so 
devoutly Catholic, cried in derision that they were 
burning the Spanish gods. ^ Since that time, as 

^ *' Recueil des Depeches," &c., de la Mothe Fenelon, 
vol i. 375, and Spanish Calendar. 



ELIZABETH UNBENDS 323 

Guaras had been the principal importer of such wares 
from Spain, he had shown himself as little as possible 
in the streets to avoid unpleasantness, though of 
course he, like so many other Spaniards interested, 
had tried his hand again and again to make some 
private arrangement for the ransom of the Spanish 
commercial property seized by the English. 

The Flemish noble Zweveghem, and the Genoese 
merchant Fiesco, who had both been negotiating in 
London about the seizures, were packed off at the 
same time as de Spes, for Elizabeth and Cecil were 
bent upon making the demonstration as political and 
public as possible ; but though it did not suit the eco- 
nomical Queen to disgorge what she had taken, she 
had no wish to drive Philip to extremities, and the 
stoppage of the great English cloth trade with Flan- 
ders and of the importation of Spanish produce into 
England was causing serious distress in the country. 
So, having thoroughly humbled the Spaniards, whose 
hands were fuller than ever now with the capture of 
Brille by the Beggars and the rising of all Zeeland, 
supported by ample English aid, Elizabeth thought 
that the time had come for her to unbend a little to 
her sorely pressed brother-in-law. Walsingham's half 
joking colloquy with Alava in Paris, in January, 1572, 
had been a straw cast into the air ; the warning of the 
Dutch privateer fleet out of Dover, though ostensibly 
to satisfy the remonstrances of the Hamburg 
merchants, was another ; and in March Guaras, a 
mere merchant, hitherto so unpopular, suddenly found 
himself made much of by emissaries from the Court. 
Friends of Cecil told him that the Queen was only 
too willing to come to an amicable arrangement about 
trade, and any person who brought it about would be 



324 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

doing a great service to God and to both coun- 
tries. What a pity it was that there was no person 
accredited in London who could undertake it ! Would 
Guara^onvey these expressions to Alba? If so, the 
interlocutor would approach Lord Burghley. 

After many hints of this sort Burghley himself sent 
for, Guaras, and told him that they were anxious to 
settle matters. "He spoke of your Majesty's person 
with due reverence, confessing to me that they had 
always hitherto feared and suspected greatly that the 
Duke of Alba, being a declared enemy, might oppose 
a settlement, but they had lately been informed that 
the evil did not arise with him entirely, but from 
certain persons in your Majesty's Court, mentioning 
the late Duke of Feria, who, he said, though ostensibly 
a good friend of the Queen, was in matters of State 
her enemy." Guaras, who loved to play the states- 
man, boasted somewhat of his master's greatness and 
of the benefit his friendship would bring to England, 
but, of course, in diplomacy he was no match for Cecil, 
who firmly put him into his place. Thenceforward for 
weeks the game of advance and retire on the part of 
Cecil went on. Sometimes Guaras would go home to 
Thames Street in the seventh heaven of delight, with 
the idea that he was settling great national affairs 
where professional diplomatists had failed ; at other 
times he would stand for hours in Cecil's anterooms of 
Whitehall, only to be passed by silently with a cold 
nod when the Minister came out. 

When at last it was agreed (8th April) that Zweve- 
ghem, the Flemish Councillor, should come again to 
England and settle matters, Guaras, much pleased at his 
success, entered his barge from Whitehall stairs to 
return home with the friend who served as his interme- 



GUARAS TO THE RESCUE 325 

diary with Lord Burghley. As the boat pushed off into 
the stream, he says, " I saw the Queen approaching the 
landing-place of the Palace in her barge, in which, the 
day being fine, she had been taking the air in company 
with my Lord of Leicester and many other gentlemen, 
and followed by a large number of boats filled with 
people who wished to see her Majesty. We, being 
amongst the press of people, stayed our boat to look 
upon her, and when I made my bow like the rest, the 
Queen, as usual, saluted the people, and noticing me, 
either because she recognised me or because I was 
a foreigner or some one told her my name, to the 
surprise of every one, I being such a humble person, 
she, calling out to me in Italian, my boat being some- 
what distant from hers out of respect to her, asked me 
very gaily and graciously if I was coming from the 
Court and had seen Lord Burghley. I knelt, as was 
my duty, and replied, ' Yes, Madam, at your Majesty's 
service.' As the boats approached the landing-place 
her Majesty's barge was delayed a moment, when she 
smilingly seemed to desire to say something more 
to me, whereupon I endeavoured to bring my boat 
alongside the Queen's barge, and she turned towards 
me and asked, ' When were you with Lord Burghley ?' 
to which I replied, ' Madam, I have just left him,' 
whereupon she waved her hand several times, ap- 
parently with great pleasure, and said, ' That is all 
right,' and her barge then proceeded, she bidding 
me farewell with so many signs of pleasure and 
favour that people noticed it much, and I was more 
surprised than any one to receive these favours from 
the Queen, to whom I have never rendered any 
service." ^ 

^ Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 



326 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Elizabeth had no intention, however, of allowing 
the Spaniards, and particularly Alba, to assume any 
airs of superiority on the strength of her willingness to 
negotiate about trade. When Zweveghem saw her a 
few days afterwards, sent by Alba to discuss terms, 
she thought that his tone was too haughty, and that 
he seemed to assume that she was pleading for an 
arrangement. Guaras, of course, had to bear the 
blame. It was at once said that he had misrepre- 
sented matters to Alba, and there was nothing but 
black looks for him. "Tell Guaras," said Burghley, 
" that if he wants to come and see me let him come, or 
stay away, as he likes. . . If the Duke of Alba, through 
Guaras, pretends to be willing for peace and concord, 
whilst on the other hand through Zweveghem he 
treats the matter in a different spirit, it is clear that, 
however good our intentions may be, theirs are not 
equally so." Alba was in no melting mood now, 
for English men and arms were being poured into 
Zeeland, and the Huguenots also were helping the 
Netherlanders against him. The Dutch privateers 
were still sheltered in English ports, whilst Constable 
Montmorenci, and one of the most splendid embassies 
that ever represented France, was in England for the 
ratification of the offensive and defensive alliance of 
the two countries that had been signed at Blois on the 
1 2th April. By it the Spanish Netherlands were to 
be partitioned, the ancient rivals were never to quarrel 
again, the Huguenot Navarre was to marry the King 
of France's sister. Elizabeth might, perhaps, marry 
young Alen^on, but in any case she and Catharine, 
with the Huguenots, were bound together for ever to 
resist the arrogance of Spain. All this was gall and 
wormwood to Alba, and, busy as he was with his 



THE COQUETTING WITH FRANCE 327 

bloody work, it is no wonder that he was now in 
no hurry to respond to the English approaches for 
a settlement, and Guaras for a time found himself 
cold-shouldered. 

The affection between the French and English, 
however, was too pronounced to last very long. The 
offensive and defensive alliance against Spain had 
given to the Huguenots more power than quite suited 
Catharine, and the Colignys and their friends of the 
"religion" were speaking too boldly to please her. 
The Emperor (whose daughter the young King 
Charles IX. had married), the Pope, and the Doge 
of Venice sent to remonstrate with the Most Christian 
King for thus joining rebels and heretics against good 
Catholics, whilst the Gondis, Biragos, and Guises were 
whispering to Catharine that she was provoking Philip 
too far. So, as the summer of 1572 wore on, the 
messages sent from France to England grew cooler, 
and Charles IX. began to cry off the bargain for the 
joint action with Elizabeth in the Spanish Nether- 
lands. But still Catharine pushed industriously 
the love-making of her favourite boy AlenQon 
with Elizabeth, in order that England and the 
Huguenots might not be driven into open opposi- 
tion to her. A pretty lad named La Mole, one of 
the mignons, was sent to England in July, ostensibly 
to do the vicarious love-making for Alen^on, but really 
to discourage the idea of any act of overt hostility on 
the part of France in the Spanish States, ^ and thus 

^ The French Huguenot force that had entered Flanders to 
aid the rebels had just been utterly routed by Alba's son, Don 
Fadrique, and Charles IX. saw that unless he could dissociate 
himself from the unsuccessful attempt he might be dragged 
down by the fall of the Huguenot party. 



328 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

practically to withdraw from the much-lauded treaty 
of alliance, of which the ink was hardly dry. 

La Mole performed the philandering part of his 
mission entirely to Elizabeth's satisfaction. She was 
on her progress to Kenilworth, and carried the young 
French gallant along with her from place to place, 
exerting all her mature witcheries upon him, but 
keenly alive and not a little apprehensive at the 
way in which she had been thrown over with re- 
gard to the alliance. The danger to her was great, 
for she had been drawn into a position of open 
hostility to the Spaniards in Flanders on the 
strength of the alliance with France, and now found 
herself alone. So she told everybody, and most 
people believed her this time, that she meant to 
marry the French prince without fail, and when she 
bade goodbye to La Mole at Kenilworth, he went 
on his homeward way loaded with sweet messages 
for the Prince and rich presents for himself. 

He arrived in London on the 27th August on his 
way to France ; and on the same day there landed 
at Rye two couriers from Paris, one with letters from 
Walsingham to the Queen, the other with official 
despatches to the French ambassador. The latter 
were seized by the port authorities and sent in 
haste to the Queen at Kenilworth ; but secret 
though they were kept, ill tidings fly fast, and soon 
there sped through England, none knew how or 
whence, the dread news that the Papists had banded 
together to slaughter Protestants throughout the 
world. On the fated day of Navarre's wedding in 
Paris — the day of Saint Bartholomew — the storm 
had burst. Hounded on by the King himself and 
by his mother, slaughter unchecked had swept 



SAINT BARTHOLOMEW 329 

icross the capital. The noble Coligny had fallen 
first, and then every citizen but those who wore the 
badge of Guise was hounded to his death. Through 
France the tale of horror ran, across the Channel to 
Protestant England fled thousands of Huguenots, 
dreading the general massacre that portended ; and 
when Elizabeth suspended her pastime at Kenilworth 
to read the despatch that brought the news, her brow 
douded and her heart sank ; for it seemed now that, at 
last, all her clever tricks had failed and catastrophe 
loomed over her and England. For the league 
of Bayonne had produced its baleful fruit at last. ^ 
The alliance and friendship just so ostentatiously 
concluded with France was but a fraud and a blind, 
the marriage talk with Alengon was all a lie : Catharine 
and her son, after all, had made common cause with 
Philip and the Guises, and England stood alone 
opposed to united. Catholicism pledged to wholesale 
massacre. 

In a day the orgy of St. Bartholomew had changed 
the political aspect. The French, lately so caressed 
in England, were now regarded as monsters of falsity. 
Elizabeth, in deep mourning, after long delay received 
the French ambassador coldly, and contemptuously 
listened to his palliations and explanations ; for she 
knew that the Guises were now paramount in France, 
and from them she had nothing but enmity to expect. 
But dismay was not allowed to dominate the counsels 
of Elizabeth for very long. When such a combination 
as this existed between the ancient enemies Spain and 
France, England's safety depended upon sowing dis- 

^ The story of the reception of the news of St. Bartholomew 
in England may best be followed in the Correspondance Diplo- 
matique de La Mothe Fenelon. 



330 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

cord between them. This was never very difficult, for 
their interests nationally were always antagonistic, and 
their antipathies were stronger than their affinities. ^ 
At the first flush of the news Philip and the Spaniards 
were overjoyed that so many heretics should be 
butchered, and Guaras from London, writing to the 
Duke of Alba on the 30th August says : "God grant 
that it may be true, and that these rebel heretics may 
have met with this bad end " ; and the national conse- 
quences were not lost upon him, even thus early, 
for though he was but a meddling merchant, he 
had far clearer ideas of policy than had de Spes. 
" Since the news came we hear no more of English 
soldiers going over to Flanders. This last affair, 
indeed, will give them something else to think about. 
If the news from Paris be true, the league between 
these people [i.e., the English] and the French will 
probably come to nothing, as the people are already 
murmuring that they cannot trust Frenchmen." 
Elizabeth, indeed, had been badly betrayed by 

^ How soon division was introduced is seen by the action 
of Catharine, who saw only a few weeks after St. Bartholomew 
the mistake she had made in allowing the Catholic party to go 
too far, and once more began to court the Huguenots and 
Elizabeth, and also by the suspicion evinced by La Mothe, 
the French ambassador in London, of Guaras' renewed favour 
at Elizabeth's Court. Writing on the 9th November, he says 
that Alba is making all sorts of tempting offers to Elizabeth 
through Guaras to draw her away from French friendship and send 
an ambassador to Philip. " Guaras is intriguing for this with 
such good presents that I am told that he has given more than 
10,000 crowns to one personage alone, who has some authority 
here. He has done so much that the Lords of the Council have 
been busy for several days trying to come to some arrangement 
with the King of Spain, and Guaras is often at Court." — Corres- 
pondance Diplomatique, vol. v. 



ELIZABETH COURTS SPAIN 331 

the F'rench. She had been drawn Into hostility to 
Philip in Flanders, and had been left in the lurch. 
To her alone now could the Prince of Orange look 
for help, since the French had deserted him ; and 
though she had no intention of allowing the Dutch 
Protestants to be crushed by Alba, Elizabeth saw that 
in future all she did to help them must be done with- 
out an open national rupture between England and 
Spain, Immediately, therefore, her tone changed. 
Not only were the Dutch rebels ostentatiously disa- 
vowed by her, but the somewhat bewildered Guaras 
found himself once more a persona grata at Court. ^ 
Early in October the Duke of Alba sent him his cool 
and tardy reply with regard to the proposed negotia- 
tions for reopening trade. When Guaras appeared 
at Windsor with the despatch he found Burghley all 
smiles. " On that very day, he said, and on many 
other previous occasions the Queen had said to him 
she wondered why Guaras did not come to Court with 
the reply. They were much surprised to have received 
no answer to the offer made by the Queen to with- 
draw the Englishmen from Flanders, who, he said, 
only went there to resist the Frenchmen, who 

^ Guaras went to Kenilworth before the reception of the news 
of St. Bartholomew to carry letters to Elizabeth from King 
Philip notifying the appointment of Medina Celi to Flanders. 
Only a few days after the tidings of St. Bartholomew the French 
ambassador wrote to Charles IX : " It seems to me that these 
people are bent in any case in hatching some new plan with 
Antonio de Guaras on the pretext of the letters from the King 
of Spain and Medina Celi he carried to the Queen at Kenilworth. 
The purport of the letters was simply to notify the coming 
of Medina Celi to Flanders ; but these people, in consequence 
of what has happened at Paris, wish to make them serve for a 
further purpose.'' — Correspondance Diplomatique de la Mothe 
Fenelon. 



332 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

might try to gain a footing. . . . When I told him I 
had a letter for the Queen he seemed greatly delighted 
and asked me to show it to him. When he read the 
superscripture he said, * Although it comes tardily 
and the Queen is unwell, I will take it to her at once, 
because I know how pleased she will be to know that 
you have come with the message.' " ^ 

Thenceforward for a time no one was more welcome 
at Court than Guaras. A fortnight after the above 
letter was written the French ambassador, La Mothe, 
remarked: "Guaras .... the Spaniard, is much 
better attended to and more favourably received at 
this Court than he used to be. He has great hopes 
of getting them to withdraw all the English from 
Flushing and Flanders, as well as of arranging the 
disputes about commercial intercourse." ^ All was not 
plain sailing yet, for Alba was hard and Elizabeth 
stood out firmly for religious toleration for Englishmen 
in Spain, which claim from the first was scouted as 
preposterous by the Spaniards, and in the end was 
almost the only point upon which the English had to 
give way. But the constant more or less covert 
aid in men and money sent from England to sup- 
port Orange, and the fear that if driven too far 
Elizabeth might at last yield to the arguments and 
persuasions of the Dutch that she would assume the 
protection of Holland and Zeeland, brought down even 
Alba's pride ; and early in the spring of 1573 trade was 
reopened, on terms greatly in favour of Elizabeth, 
since her subjects again obtained an open market for 
their cloths, whilst she kept practically the greater part 
of the property she had seized. 

^ Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 

= Correspondance Diplomatique de la Mothe Fenelon. \^ 



GUARAS BEGINS PLOTTING 33^ 

Gradually Guaras, though in somewhat more 
humble fashion than de Spes, immersed himself in 
intrigues on behalf of Spain, many of them doubtless 
proposed to him in good faith, but others, as we know 
now, mere traps set for him by Lord Burghley's con- 
trivance, into which he easily fell to his own ultimate 
undoing. Several English captains were in close 
negotiation with him for months for the betrayal to 
the Spaniards of Flushing, Caunfer, and other strong 
places, for the murder of the Prince of Orange, and 
other schemes. But it is evident that these advances 
through him were received with doubt and caution by 
Philip and Alba, who probably doubted his discretion, 
for when a group of English captains had to be finally 
negotiated with for the capture of Flushing a special 
envoy, a merchant seaman named Zubiaur, was sent to 
England for the purpose with strict orders that Guaras 
should know nothing whatever of it ; and even whilst 
Guaras was acting as chargS d'affaires of Spain a 
Portuguese spy (Fogaza) in Spanish pay reported all 
his movements to the authorities at Madrid. 

By the end of 1573 it was patent to all the world 
that Alba's reign of blood had failed. The stern old 
chief had been beaten indeed by Elizabeth's seizure of 
the treasure, and he never recovered from the blow. 
Forced to raise money somehow, for Philip was 
bankrupt both in credit and in means, Alba imposed 
upon rich Flanders and Brabant the "tenth penny" 
that had ruined Castile. Then all the Netherlanders 
rose. It was no longer a question of local govern- 
ment or even of faith, but of moneybags ; and 
Catholic and Protestant alike rebelled against spolia- 
tion and the destruction of Flemish prosperity. In- 
dignant remonstrances went to Philip, and the Spanish 



334 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Council even angrily condemned Alba's measure. 
" Neither the heads smitten off nor the privileges 
abolished have aroused so much resistance as this," 
wrote Alba : but he needed money for the King's 
service, and money he must have. Thus he found 
himself face to face, not with a faction in revolt, but 
with an outraged and united nation, and through 1572 
the grim old Duke stuck to his guns. First he 
crushed the south, sweeping the Huguenot auxiliaries 
aside and submitting all those who raised the 
slightest protest to ruthless slaughter. 

Brabant and Flanders, bloodless, could fight against 
him no more, but Holland and Zeeland were made of 
sterner stuff. Money and men in abundance came to 
them from England, and all the silver ducats scattered 
by Guaras and all Elizabeth's protestations of friend- 
ship for her dear brother in Spain could not stop 
them ; until at last Philip grew angry and impatient 
at the useless slaughter, and Alba, heartbroken, went 
into disgrace, whilst a viceroy of widely different type 
came with the olive-branch in hand to win back at 
least Catholic Brabant and Flanders to Philip's rule 
again by almost any concessions. There was, indeed, 
no other way for Philip now, for he had come to the 
end of his resources, and his troubles were not 
confined to the Protestant Netherlands. 

His brilliant young brother, Don Juan of Austria, 
in command of the combined Christian fleet, had 
sailed from Messina in September, 157 1, and had 
broken the Moslem power in the Mediterranean that 
had for so long been a thorn in the side of Spain. 
All Catholic Christendom lost its head over Don 
Juan : his enthusiasm, his gallantry, his personal 
beauty made him in the eyes of his contemporaries 



DON JUAN'S AMBITIONS 335 

a very paladin of the Cross. Philip, religious though 
he might be, was cold and reticent, appealing little to 
the imagination of men. But this young Prince, his 
brother, splendid beyond words and with some of the 
military ability of his father the Emperor, might be 
the man destined by God for the final victory of the 
Cross over all its enemies. Don Juan not only carried 
away others, but was carried away himself. To 
follow up his victory by the conquest of Constanti- 
nople and the Holy Land, and to become a new 
Constantine, seemed to him and to the Catholics, who 
idolised him, an easily realisable vision. If not that, 
then why not Christianise Africa, re-establish the 
empire of Carthage with Don Juan as its sovereign .f* 
But all this meant vast sums of money, and to 
such suggestions Philip turned an irresponsive ear. 
Clamour as Don Juan and his friends might, no 
assistance could be got from Spain for his wild 
schemes ; for King Philip had other things to do 
than conquer vast new empires for his base brother, 
whilst his own Netherlands were slipping from his 
grasp and Elizabeth of England openly defied him. 
Then Don Juan, disobeying orders, seized and forti- 
fied Tunis on his own account. All appeals for 
support to Philip were sternly refused, and within a 
year the city was recaptured by the Turk and the eight 
thousand Spaniards in it slaughtered. Don Juan in 
despair remained in Italy, full still of high dreams 
of heroic conquest for the faith. He was surrounded, 
as before, by advisers as flighty and hot-headed as 
himself ; and it occurred to some of them If he was 
not to be allowed to become a Christian Emperor 
of the East, there was in the West another empire 
in the hands of heretics, still awaiting its champion 
who should restore It to the Church. 



336 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Guaras wrote to Philip's Secretary, Zayas, as early 
as November, 1574, saying, "The Queen of Scotland 
founds all her hopes upon his Majesty after God, and 
by a letter she has written to an influential friend, who 
read it to me, it is certain that there is nothing she 
desires more than to accept the proposition about Don 
Juan of Austria,^ she having been persuaded by this 
person and others that it would benefit Christendom 
greatly. If it be his Majesty's wish that this matter 
should be considered, and communications have to be 
carried on with the Queen about it, this cipher can be 
utilised for the purpose, it being so obscure and with- 
out an alphabet that no one can decipher it. ... If 
this happy event could be brought about, she would 
be a saintly, chaste, and Catholic Princess, the greatest 
lady on earth, for England, Scotland, and Ireland 
are indeed a vast empire. ... If his Majesty will 
graciously allow a letter for her contentment in this 
business to be written, an opportunity might occur for 
her rescue. If consent is given on our part this 
project would undoubtedly be executed. She writes 
herself about it to the person I have mentioned, and 
desires above all things that her son should marry 
the elder Infanta, for which purpose she will consent 

' This was not the first time that the suggestion of a marriage 
between Mary and Don Juan had been made. A letter written 
by Lord Burghley to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Keeper of the 
Queen of Scots, written soon after the discovery of the Ridolfi 
plot, says that Elizabeth does not complain of Mary's attempts 
to escape to Spain or elsewhere, nor is she offended by the pro- 
posal to marry young James to the Infanta. "Nether that she 
sought to make the King of Spayne beleve that she wold geve 
ear to tlie offer of Don Jon of Austria." The real cause of 
Elizabeth's anger, says Lord Burghley, is Mary's conspiracy to 
raise a revolution in England. — Talbot Papers (Lodge). 



MARY STUART AND DON JUAN ZZ7 

that the man who holds him should carry him to 
Spain." 

Philip had heard stories similar to this before, and 
was not ready yet for another plot depending upon the 
English Catholics. Requesens, the new Viceroy of 
Flanders, did his best, but he was surrounded by 
unconquerable difficulties from the first, legacies, most 
of them, from the regime of Alba. Many of the 
Flemish seamen were disloyal and the Catholic clergy 
disaffected, whilst the mercantile classes were nearly 
beggared and in deep discontent. But, withal, the 
Walloons and Southern States were pacified, though 
Holland and Zeeland were as stubborn as ever. 
Requesens' principal difficulty, as usual, was want 
of money ; and the Catholic Flemings insisted that 
if they were to remain loyal to Spain the unpaid, 
murderous rabble of foreign soldiers who were 
terrorising friends and enemies alike must be with- 
drawn from Flanders. But Philip could not pay 
them, and they would not budge without their wage, 
for the rich houses of the burghers were always 
there for plunder. In the midst of this impasse, when 
things were at their worst, Requesens died, in March, 
1576, and Philip, glad to get his brother away from 
Italy, ordered him to hurry direct to Flanders and 
carry out the policy of pacification at any cost or 
sacrifice. The troops were to be sent away, the 
burghers conciliated, and, if possible, the Dutch won 
over by promises of large concessions. 

To Don Juan, with his heart aflame with high 
ambitions, concessions and conciliation of heretics were 
utterly repugnant ; but the mission seemed to open 
a sure road to the great plan we have seen hinted 
at in Guaras' letter of November, 1574. Pope 



338 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Gregory XIII. was as ready as Don Juan for such 
an enterprise, and sent his Nuncio to PhiHp to pray 
him to allow his brother to swoop down upon England 
with the troops from Flanders, release and marry 
Mary Stuart, and with her become sovereign of a 
Britain Catholic and a faithful ally of Spain. Philip, 
as was his wont when he disapproved of a plan, was 
vaguely benevolent, but he hated priestly interference 
in his plans, and distrusted the Vatican where the 
French priests had so much to say. Worst of all, 
Don Juan disobeyed orders and came to Spain to 
press his plans for capturing England, and the delay 
thus caused was fatal. Before he could reach the 
Flemish frontier the Italian and Spanish troops had 
thrown off all restraint and had sacked Antwerp. 
The Catholic Flemings and Walloons were forced to 
make common cause with Orange, who assumed the 
lead in the Government, and all Netherlanders stood 
shoulder to shoulder against the ravishers and spoilers 
of their homes. When Don Juan came, therefore, he 
was told that he would only be admitted on conditions 
to be dictated by the States. Among these conditions 
was that the mutinous troops should not be sent away 
by sea, for the plan to invade England with them was 
well known by Orange, but should march out over- 
land. Don Juan protested and raved in vain. Philip 
coldly ordered him to accede to any terms consistent 
with Spanish sovereignty over Flanders ; and at last, 
in the early spring of 1577, he made his "joyous 
entry " into Brussels with a heart steeped in hate 
of the Flemings, whose firmness had destroyed his 
great dream of capturing England for the Cross and 
marrying the imprisoned Catholic Queen, like the 
hero of a fairy tale. 



MARY STUART AND DON JUAN 339 

In these fine plans Guaras was a zealous and a 
willing agent, and Mary Stuart, as usual, an eager 
participant, all their intrigues being perfectly well 
known to Cecil through his spies. Cecil, indeed, 
had become quite friendly with Guaras,^ and thus, 
without being suspected, kept his eye on all his 
proceedings. The letters the merchant wrote to 
Spain were frequently intercepted, and although the 
pride of Guaras in his cipher was justified and most of 
the contents are still undeciphered, sufificient was read 
to prove that he was plotting ceaselessly with England's 
enemies. Letters, too, were known to be passing by 
means of Guaras between Mary Stuart and Don 
Juan ; and even the Flemish Catholic nobles, who had 
now for a time deserted the Spanish cause and were 
appealing to Elizabeth for aid, were constantly warn- 
ing the English of the plans that were being so 
industriously forwarded by Guaras. 

That Mary Stuart and Don Juan at this time 
understood each other perfectly, though Philip, for 
reasons already pointed out, was irresponsive to their 
appeals, is seen in an important letter written by 
Mary to the conspirator Charles Paget long after- 
wards (May, 1586) at the time when she was impli- 
cated in the plot that ended in her death. Paget was 

^ One of Burghley's spies, Lane, a Catholic, ventured even to 
reproach the minister for talking so much to Guaras on foreign 
policy. It appears that Burghley's hare-brained son-in-law, Lord 
Oxford, and another English noble were in secret negotiation 
with Guaras to do some service to the Spaniards in Flanders, 
Guaras to find the necessary money on Oxford's pledge. Lane 
advises Burghley to put a spoke into the wheel. Lane says that 
unless Guaras is employed in some way — preferably in Ireland 
on Government affairs — ^he may develop pernicious activity 
elsewhere. — Hatfield Papers, vol. ii., June, 1573. 



340 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

instructed to discover through Mendoza, the Spanish 
ambassador in Paris, whether Philip was then (1586) 
ready to attack England, which, she says, "to me 
seemeth the surest and readiest way for him whereby 
to rid himself altogether of the Queen's malice against 
him. So as now he doth find himself constrained to 
come to the same remedies which in Don John of 
Austria's time were propounded unto him, which I 
doubt he shall not find presently in these parts of such 
strength and virtue as if he had applied them in time 
and place. ... I remember that Don John was 
always stiff in this opinion that there was no other 
means in the world whereby to set up again the King's 
affairs in the Low Countries, and to assure his States 
in all other parts, than in re-establishing this realm 
under God and a Prince his friend ; for, so much as 
Don John foresaw right well that this Queen would 
not fail to break with him, and give him, as she 
hath done, the first blow." ^ 

Guaras had many hints and warnings which he 
failed to regard, both from Cecil and the Queen 
herself. In his letter of 29th March, 1575, he gives 
an account of one such hint. " The Queen was 
walking," he says, " a long way from the Palace of 
Richmond, where she is staying, surrounded by her 
courtiers and nobles, when, catching sight of me from 
afar, she called me by name and welcomed me." 
He had to ask her permission to buy some cannon in 
England for the Flemish Government, to which 
she gave him an amiable reply, and he continued to 
walk through the park a few steps behind her chatting 
with her alone. She was full of her witcheries and 
compliments to Spaniards, with whom for the moment 
^ Hardwick State Papers. 



GUARAS IN DANGER 341 

it suited to be friends, but told Guaras that she was 
annoyed at the way her subjects in Spain were 
treated by the Inquisition. She grew somewhat 
vehement about it and said, " I promise ye my 
father would not have put up with it, and if the 
matter is not amended I shall be obliged to arrest 
some of the King of Spain's subjects and treat them in 
the same way." Having given this hint, she grew 
gracious again and said : " You know full well, old 
wine, old bread, and old friends should be valued, 
and if only to let these Frenchmen see, who are 
wrangling as to whether our friendship is firm or not, 
there is good reason to show undisguisedly the 
kindly feeling which inwardly exists." This, of 
course, referred to the attempts of the French to 
interfere in Flanders, which always made Elizabeth 
smile upon Spaniards ; ^ and when Guaras hand- 
somely returned the compliment the Queen suddenly 
turned upon him, and shot the bolt she had been 
preparing all along : " You say you wish to serve me, 
Guaras ; will you tell me the truth ? They say that a 
certain Scottish prisoner of mine has sent you a token 
of friendship in the form of a painted lion ; is it 
true ? " Poor Guaras could only protest that he had 

^ At this time (March, 1575) Orange, despairing of efficient 
aid from Elizabeth, was wooing the French. His daughter was 
to marry Alengon, who was to join Conde and a French army to 
assist the Flemings against Philip. This at once made 
Elizabeth turn to Spain. Not only was she, as we see, pohte to 
Guaras, but she sent Henry Cobham to Spain as an ambassador 
in August to assure Philip that on no account would she allow 
any French domination of Flanders. A fleet of Spanish 
transports, too, on the way to Flanders were received with 
effusion now in the English ports by the Government though 
not by the EngHsh sailors. — Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 



342 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

never received any such token, as he had not ; but the 
hint, and the more pointed one about the arrest, 
certainly did not abate his activity as a go-between for 
Mary and Don Juan. 

So long as the danger of French interference in 
Flanders lasted Elizabeth dared not do anything very 
unpleasant to Spain ; but as soon as that difficulty was 
banished by new negotiations for the marriage of 
Elizabeth and Alenqon, Guaras began to find his 
position less comfortable. In November, 1575, 
Egremont Ratcliff, the brother of the Earl of Sussex, 
who had been a fugitive in Flanders and Italy since 
the northern rebellion, came to England, with a 
story of Don Juan's plans in conjunction with 
Mary Stuart, and in this, of course, Guaras was 
involved. His fresh negotiations, too, early in 
1576 for the betrayal by the English Catholics of 
certain of the Zeeland fortresses to the Spaniards 
was discovered. The Flemish Catholic nobles were 
now in England praying for support against Philip's 
soldiery, and Elizabeth was in mortal fear of 
French aid being given to them on the one hand 
and of Don Juan's reported plans against England 
on the other, whilst Guaras in his correspondence 
grew more and more bitter and violent as he saw 
the fruition of his hopes gradually disappear before 
Elizabeth's amiability to the Catholic Flemish 
nobles and the united opposition now offered to 
Don Juan's ambitions. 

But in the circumstances Elizabeth did not dare 
yet to proceed to extremities with Spaniards ; and 
one case amusingly shows that these high political 
considerations somewhat bewildered administrative 
officers, who could not follow such frequent changes 



GUARAS IN DANGER 343 

of attitude. A Portuguese ambassador, Giraldi, 
had been for some time in England endeavouring 
to arrange some open questions relative to the 
depredations of the Protestant privateers ; and late 
in 1576 the Recorder of London, Sir William 
Fleetwood, a zealous Catholic-baiter, with the 
Sheriffs, considered it his duty to surround with his 
posse the house of the Portuguese envoy for the 
purpose of catching and arresting unauthorised 
persons there hearing Mass. They forced an entry 
after a stiff fight with the Portuguese porter, Mr. 
Recorder Fleetwood being rather seriously mauled 
in the afTray, and loudly broke in upon the sacred 
service by summoning all English people to come 
out in custody. Immediately the foreigners present, 
indignant at the interruption, drew their daggers 
and swords, and made as if to attack the officers, 
but were appeased by the sheriffs until the ladies 
had withdrawn. Having allowed the members of 
the embassy to depart, the officers then examined 
the other foreigners: "and trulie they most despite- 
fully against all civilitie used such lewd words in 
their language against us, that if our company had 
understande them there might have chanced great 
harm. ' Sirs,' I saide to them, * I see no remedie 
but you must goe to prison, for most of you be free 
denizens.' And then I willed the officers to lay 
hand on them, and immediately every man suddenly 
most humbly put off his cap, and began to be sutors 
and sought favour ; and so on their submission 
we suffered them to depart, all save Antonio de 
Guaras, who was not willing to go from us, but 
kept us company." After sending the English 
subjects off to prison and scolding some of their own 



344 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

constables for accepting ** singing cakes" from the 
priest at the altar, Fleetwood and Sheriff Barnes 
stood in the gallery looking down upon the altar. 
" And then Antonio Guaras tooke me by the hand 
to see the altar how trim it was. And I said to 
Guaras, ' Sir, if I had done my duty here to you 
and to the Queen upon All Hallowes Day last I 
had taken two hundred, and as many more on 
All Souls.' * Ho ! Sir,' said Guaras unto me: 'be- 
come of this religion, and surely you will like it well, 
and I will be readie means to make you a good 
Christian.' And so we went near the altar, where 
neither he nor I touched any manner of thing ; and 
so we bade the priest farewell, who gently saluted 
us, and I suddenlie looked back and saw the priest 
shake his head mumbling out words that sounded 
like Viable and male croix, or to that effect. Then 
said I to Mr. Sheriff, ' Let us depart, for the priest 
doth curse us.' And so we departed, and Antonio 
Guaras brought us to the utter gate, where the 
Sheriff and I invited him to dynner with us ; but 
he departed back to hear the profaned Mass. The 
aforesaid Guaras at this business said that he himself 

was an ambassador of a greater person than and 

so did shake his head. ' What ! ' quoth I, 'do you 
mean a greater personage than our mistress } ' * Na, 
na,' said he, ' I mean not so.' ' No,' quoth I, ' it were 
not best for you to make comparisons with the 
Queen our mistress. Whose ambassador are ye, 
then ? ' quoth I, ' the Pope's ? ' And then he departed 
further off in anger. This Guaras was a very busy 
fellow in this action." ^ 

Neither Giraldi nor Guaras was disposed to allow 
^ Fleetwood to Lord Burghley. — Wright's State Papers. 



GUARAS IN DANGER 345 

their diplomatic privileges to be violated in this 
fashion, however ; and in consequence of their 
vehement complaints Fleetwood had to submit to 
a severe scolding from the Council and was sent 
to the Fleet. But Guaras' immunity was not 
to last much longer. Elizabeth, before many months 
were over, found herself assiduously courted by the 
French, and assured by Catharine that Alengon 
would do nothing in Flanders but with the co- 
operation of England — it was hoped as Elizabeth's 
husband. Don Juan also, during the time that he 
remained in negotiation with the States, was only 
too anxious to win Elizabeth's help, or at least 
neutrality ; so that when suspicion against Guaras 
became certainty she had no hesitation in closing 
the toils around him. In January, 1577, Sir 
Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador in Paris, 
reported that a dependent of Guaras, a Spanish 
tailor, named Damian Dela, a resident in London, 
had passed through Paris with some highly sus- 
picious letters for King Philip. We know now 
that the King was firmly against Don Juan's plans 
to invade England ; but this, of course, was not 
known at the time, and Paulet advised Burghley 
to put Guaras to the torture to discover what was 
going on. This only made the English Govern- 
ment more vigilant ; but in the spring of 1577 
Secretary Wilson was sent to Flanders to endeavour 
to bring about an agreement between the States 
and Don Juan, The latter, when jocosely twitted 
by Wilson on his wish to marry the Queen of 
Scots, somewhat ungallantly ridiculed the idea as 
preposterous ; but whilst Wilson was in the Low 
Countries he managed to obtain through St. 



346 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Aldegonde possession of some intercepted letters 
from Guaras on the matter. The cipher was 
difficult, and only some words could be read ; but 
they were enough to prove that Guaras was in 
constant communication with Mary Stuart and Don 
Juan, and Wilson wrote to Cecil expressing his 
surprise that an unofficial person like Guaras should 
be allowed to act more scandalously than any 
accredited ambassador would be allowed to do. 

From that time. May, 1577, Guaras was watched 
almost night and day, and most of his letters 
intercepted, though not many could be read. On 
the 28th September, 1577, he proposed to Zayas, 
King Philip's secretary, that he should be allowed 
to arrange for the kidnapping and conveyance to 
Spain of some of the important Catholic Flemish 
nobles then in England, or to promote a revolt 
in Ireland ; and he continues by saying, " I have 
received the enclosed letters from the Queen of 
Scotland. I have perfectly safe means of sending 
and receiving letters for her, and the world is 
praying that God may be preserving her for some 
great service to the fear of this Queen and her 
friends. I am encouraging her with letters of 
comfort until she can be served by acts." ^ On the 
4th October Guaras wrote another inflammatory 
letter to Zayas, detailing the plans which he said 
had been agreed upon by England and the Flemish 
nobles to throw off the Spanish yoke for good by 
the aid of Elizabeth. He passionately cries for 
prompt reprisals upon the English, but he com- 
plains that his letters are read, and he fears his 
ciphers may be discovered. 

* Spanish Calendar, vol. ii. 



GUARAS ARRESTED 347 

At midnight on the 19th October, 1577, the 
Sheriff of London with an armed force appeared 
before the house of Guaras in Thames Street. In 
the Queen's name entrance was forced and Guaras 
placed under arrest, all his papers being seized, and he 
himself a few days later placed in solitary confinement 
in Newgate. His clerk, in conveying the news to 
Zayas, understood the gravity of the affair, for 
from the first the authorities refused to acknowledge 
the prisoner's diplomatic status. '' God deliver us 
from these troubles," he wrote, " for I promise your 
worship that unless some remedy be sent from Spain 
my master Antonio de Guaras will find himself In dire 
trouble, as will all of us in his house, for we are sore 
distressed. With all earnestness I supplicate ^'•ou 
to let his Majesty know, in the hope that delivery 
may be sent to us." Guaras himself writes from 
prison in hot indignation. He had, he says, placed 
the letters from the Queen of Scots and King Philip 
in a safe place, and they had not been captured, but 
he knows that much of his correspondence has been 
sent to England by the Flemish nobles, and, reading 
between the lines, one sees that the poor wretch 
is In mortal fear, though he passionately protests his 
innocence whilst vituperating his captors. 

No consideration or mercy was shown to him, 
and now that he was under lock and key all sorts 
of claims and accusations were made aofalnst hlm.^ 



"is" 



I Fleetwood, in one of his letters to Cecil (Wright's State 
Papers), gives particulars of one such. A son of Alderman Lee 
came and said that his brother, although a Catholic, was in 
perpetual prison in Spain, the reason being that Guaras having 
bought a ship called the Clock, had given to Lee ;^i6o to man 
the ship and attack Flushing. Lee having failed to carry out 
the plan to his satisfaction, Guaras had had him kidnapped and 



348 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

To add to his trouble he, who for thirty years at 
least had been looked upon as a wealthy merchant, 
was found to be well-nigh penniless. Philip was 
always a bad paymaster, and the 500 ducats a year he 
allowed to Guaras had been embargoed or stopped in 
Spain for some time previously. The great sum 
of 20,000 crowns, promised to him for his services 
in negotiating the reopening of trade, was never 
paid to him, though for the rest of his life he was 
petitioning piteously for it. Damian Dela, his tailor- 
steward, was arrested at the same time as his master 
and lodged in Newgate, whereupon Recorder Fleet- 
wood, examining him in November, he revealed the 
sad condition of Guaras' finances : "I finde that he 
hath not a groat to bless him withal. His house- 
hold stuff is not worth forty shillings. He is in my 
opinion Iro PauperioTy and were it not that libertie 
is sweet I know not where in his own country he 
should have like entertainment." By Fleetwood 
Guaras sent beseeching messages for mercy to 
Burghley, " his only hope and trust " ; but it was not 
the Cecil way to befriend fallen men, and Guaras 
appealed to his former crony in vain. 

Slowly the act of accusation against Guaras was 
elaborated. Such portions of his letters as could be 
read were brought up against him,^ his servants, one 
and all, were interrogated, whilst he himself was almost 

imprisoned in Spain. Guaras, he said, had thirty or forty spies in 
his service, who used to sit or walk in his hall downstairs at 
night without a candle, until, one by one, they were led up to 
Guaras' room by Dela to report what they had discovered. 
Guaras' house at Dowgate, Thames Street, was on a portion of 
the site covered by Cannon Street Station, and was bought by 
the Drapers' Company on his conviction. — Domestic Calendar. 
» Hatfield Papers, vol. ii., and Spanish Calendar. 



GUARAS IN PRISON 349 

driven crazy by threats of the rack and the scaffold. 
The questions administered to him in prison are 
amongst Lord Burghley's papers and at Simancas, 
and show the charges brought against him : " What 
letters had passed between you and the Scots Queen?" 
" What do you know of their contents and of the 
negotiations between her and Don Juan?" "How 
far did Don Juan proceed in the marriage treaty with 
the Queen of Scots?" "In the cipher between you 
and Don Juan, who were intended by the numbers 82, 
29, and 38?" "What practices have been intended 
for disquieting the realm, and who were the principal 
authors ? " ^ and many other questions of the same 
sort. In June, 1578, the case against him for con- 
spiring against the State in favour of Mary Stuart 
was held to be proven, and the unfortunate man was 
lodged in the Tower, threatened now with death. 
To all interrogatories Guaras had answered haughtily 
that he was the diplomatic representative of the 
Catholic King, who would heavily avenge any injury 
done to him ; but Philip had other cares to occupy 
him than to avenge a meddling merchant's plots, of 
which he (Philip) had never approved. 

It was more important now than ever that Eliza- 
beth should be conciliated. Don Juan, in despair at 
his hateful position and at the cold irresponsiveness of 

' Guaras had the incredible imprudence to write a violent, 
treasonable letter to Don Juan from Newgate itself, dated 
14th November. Though he is a prisoner, he will continue 
to perform his work by the aid of friends. All has been 
seized, but he now sends his son, who is as zealous as him- 
self, to Spain through France. The draft in Spanish was, of 
course, taken from the prisoner when he was transferred to 
the Tower, and is now in the Record Office. — Flanders Corre- 
spondence, iii. loi. 



350 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

his brother, had in February, 1578, cast all considera- 
tions to the winds, had fortified himself in Namur, and 
had defied the States to do their worst. Philip, by the 
rash impetuosity of his brother, thus found it necessary 
to fight not only for the maintenance of orthodoxy in 
his Netherlands dominions, but for his sovereignty, 
The Archduke Mathias, one of his own kin, had been 
invited by the Flemings to accept the Catholic Crown 
of Flanders, and on his failure to unite the country, 
Alen9on, the French Prince, had bidden for the prize. 
If Elizabeth could be won over by Orange to help or 
co-operate with the French in Flanders, then nothing 
could save Philip's sovereignty ; and so, until the 
great Alexander Farnese, Don Juan's successor, with 
warcraft and diplomacy combined, was able gradually 
to separate the Catholic Flemings from the Protestant 
Dutchmen, it behoved Philip at any sacrifice to win 
again the good graces of Elizabeth, to arouse her 
jealousy of French interference in Flanders, and hold 
her, notwithstanding all that had passed, to the tra- 
ditional alliance with his House with the ancient 
object. Nor was Elizabeth loath to meet her brother- 
in-law half-way this time, for a French domination in 
Flanders she could never allow, and whilst on the one 
hand she conjured the danger by befooling Alen^on 
into the firm belief that she would marry him if he 
would obey her, on the other she held out her hand 
to Philip. Wilkes, the Clerk of the Privy Council, 
was sent off to Spain to vindicate the Queen's action 
in Flanders : to say how hard she had tried to bring 
about peace, notwithstanding Don Juan's impractic- 
ability, to beg for Don Juan's recall, ^ and to urge that 

^ Her great complaint against Don Juan is founded on his 
plots with Mary Stuart, as disclosed by the intercepted letters 



THE MISSION OF MENDOZA 351 

some sort of peace should be brought about with the 
States on the basis that Don Juan had violated, faiHng 
which she will be obliged, as before, to aid those who 
are battlinor for freedom of conscience. 

o 

It was a bitter pill for Philip that he should have 
to brook Elizabeth's interference between his rebel 
subjects and himself, and he treated Wilkes in very 
high and mighty fashion, on the pretext that his rank 
was inadequate for such a mission. But he made 
amends by sending to England, hard upon Wilkes' 
heels, a scion of one of the noblest houses in Spain 
as his ambassador. Soldier, author, diplomatist, and 
courtier, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, a man with the 
pride of Lucifer and the intolerance of St. Dominic, 
was entrusted with a mission of humility to the Queen 
of all the "heretics." No apology had ever been sent 
by Elizabeth for the expulsion of de Spes, or for the 
seizure of the treasure ; Guaras was a close prisoner, 
daily threatened with torture, and his claim to diplo- 
matic privilege laughed at ; yet the King of Spain 
was obliged to swallow his pride, and send an 
ambassador who was almost a suppliant to beg 
Elizabeth not to help his revolted subjects. 

The change of position between the two sovereigns 
since the beginning of the Queen's reign is nowhere 
so clearly seen as by a comparison of the instructions 
of Mendoza with the attitude of Feria and his master, 
described in the earlier pages of the present volume. 
Mendoza's mission was piteously apologetic. Don 

of his secretary, Escobedo. " Not that she is afraid of him, 
but she does not wish knowingly to foster a serpent in her 
bosom. If the King asks for proof, let him read Escobedo's 
letters set down in the book above mentioned, and consider 
his practices through his agents with her enemy the Queen of 
Scots." — Mr. Wilkes' instructions, Foreign Calendar, 1577-78. 



352 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Juan and the Spanish troops should be withdrawn. It 
was all a mistake about the abrogation of the edict of 
toleration. The States should have all they demanded 
if they would only be loyal and Catholic, and Eliza- 
beth was appealed to earnestly not to aid rebellion in 
her good brother's States. Mendoza was directed to 
"endeavour to keep her in a good humour, and con- 
vinced of our friendship, banishing the distrust of us 
which she now appears to entertain, and for which 
we have given her no good cause." The English 
ministers were all to be heavily bribed, and at any 
cost, the new ambassador was instructed, English 
neutrality was to be secured. 

Mendoza passed through Paris on his way to 
England in February, and found the French Court 
in dismay. Young Alen^on had escaped his brother's 
vigilance, and, with a force of Huguenots and German 
mercenaries, was on the Flemish frontier in full 
negotiation with the Prince of Orange and the Pro- 
testants to assume the sovereignty as a rival to 
Mathias, the nominee of the Catholics. Don Juan 
had just won the battle of Gembloux against the 
united rebel States, and was known to be intriguing 
with the Guises against Elizabeth, though not, as was 
thought in England, with Philip's connivance ; and 
the Queen of England found herself in perplexity 
between two fires. The Marquis d'Havrey, the 
Flemish Catholic noble representing the States, was 
assuring her that unless she sent an army over at 
once, under Leicester or his brother, to help them, 
they must hand themselves over to Alen9on and the 
Frenchmen, which she was determined to prevent, 
cost what it might ; ^ whilst, on the other hand, she 

* In May, 1578, she sent Walsingham and Cobham to Orange to 
warn him against the French connection, and to Don Juan, to 



ELIZABETH'S PROBLEMS 353 

was told from all quarters that the Kings of Spain 
and France, with the Pope, Don Juan, and the Guises, 
were all united and determined to crush her for once 
and for all. Her problem was how to save Orange 
and the Protestants in Holland from being over- 
whelmed, without dragging England into a war with 
Philip ; to prevent the French, even Huguenots, from 
gaining a footing in the Low Countries, and to avert 
a Catholic coalition against her. By what consum- 
mate diplomacy she contrived to attain her ends will 
be seen in the next chapter, which recounts her 
intercourse with Bernardino de Mendoza as Philip's 
ambassador. 

say that if the French entered Flanders she would send 20,000 
men to help the Spaniards, and if they were not enough, every 
man in her country should go. — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



AA 



CHAPTER VIII 
1578-1584 

Mendoza and Elizabeth — His haughty behaviour — The French in 
Flanders — Elizabeth's approaches to Philip — The Spanish designs on 
Portugal — Renewed plots of Mary Stuart — Appeals to Philip to aid her 
in England — Philip's attitude towards Guisan co-operation with him 
in Britain — The Jesuit mission — Mendoza and the Catholic plot in Scot- 
land — Elizabeth aids the Portuguese pretender — Anger of Mendoza — 
His altercation with Elizabeth — Progress of the plots — Collapse of 
Lennox — The interference of Guise in the plans — The jealousy between 
English Catholic exiles and the Scots — Development of the Anglo- 
Spanish plans and intended exclusion of Guise — Arrest of Francis 
Throckmorton — Discovery of the plot — Expulsion of Mendoza — Philip 
faces the inevitable and slowly prepares for a war of invasion 

ON the 1 6th March, 1578, Mendoza sat on a 
low stool by Elizabeth's side, under the 
canopy in the Palace of Greenwich. He 
was a man already of mature age, of stately port, 
strong and masterful as became a dashing cavalry 
leader, but he spoke on this occasion, his first formal 
audience of Elizabeth, in silken tones, as he tried 
his best to excuse Don Juan's breach of faith with 
the States. The Queen, on her side, had nothing 
but complaints and protests. Her aim was to be 
made a party to the new pacification, either as 
arbitrator or mediator, because, she said, that she 
would have to provide the financial guarantee offered 
by the States. But it was not Philip's intention to 

allow her thus to come between him and his subjects, 

354 



ELIZABETH AND MENDOZA 355 

and this point was always evaded, cleverly as she 
urged it. But upon the main point she and Mendoza 
soon agreed. If Philip would make the concessions 
to the States that he now promised, and they refused 
to submit, she herself would help to punish them ; and 
as for the French, she would take care they were 
never masters of Flanders, with or without Don Juan. 
It was noticed that as soon as the Queen said that she 
would help to punish the States if they did not accept 
the terms promised by Philip, Leicester hurriedly left 
the chamber, it was whispered to write by special 
courier to Flanders that Havrey should at once 
return to England and represent the rebel view of 
the situation. 

*' I am glad to see you again," ''■ said the Queen, 
after the business talk was finished, "although I 
have been told that the real object of your coming 
is to plan many things to my injury ; but even if 
you were not a minister of my good brother, I do 
not think that you would do me much harm." Need- 
less to say, Mendoza loudly proclaimed his devotion 
to her, and for a time all went harmoniously between 
them. Alen9on from the frontier sent to Elizabeth 
lovelorn epistles of devotion, which she looked at 
for a time with some distrust, believing that this 
might be a trap whereby the French, as a nation, 
were endeavouring to gain a footing in Flanders to 
her prejudice. Of one thing she was quite deter- 
mined, namely, that for every Frenchman who entered 
Flanders an Englishman should enter too ; and to 
all Mendoza's remonstrances at the aid in men and 

^ Mendoza had come to England some years previously, on 
one of the many abortive attempts to settle the question of the 

seizures. 



356 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

money that constantly flowed over to the Nether- 
lands, Elizabeth had the answer ready that they 
went as much in Philip's interest as her own, to 
prevent the country from falling into the hands of 
the French. To Orange, whom she constantly up- 
braided for welcoming French aid, her scolding 
reproaches meant little, for, as he said, he cared 
not whence came the help by means of which he 
could fight the Spaniards, and if he obtained, as he 
did, forces from Alen9on and from Elizabeth too, 
he was willing to put up with the Englishwoman's 
hard words. 

She did not mince matters with Mendoza, either. 
*' By God ! " she shouted, " if the edict of toleration is 
not re-granted to the States I will help them against 
you whilst I have a man left in England." Mendoza 
drily remarked that she was helping them pretty effec- 
tually already, " and that, grateful as I was for her 
kindness to me, I could not help telling her that 
your Majesty had very long arms, and that if need 
arose their strength would be felt in any country 
upon which they were placed. She swallowed 
this," says Mendoza, "with rather a wry face, and 
said she did not consider these people to be rebels, 
as they were satisfied with what your Majesty had 
granted to them before, and she would not allow 
either the French to set foot in the States nor the 
Spaniards to oppress them." Thus surely but slowly 
Elizabeth worked her way ; but with the inevitable 
consequence of convincing Mendoza, as all other 
Spanish ambassadors in turn had been convinced, 
that force against Elizabeth was their only remedy, 
since in diplomacy she was more than a match for 
the cast-iron methods of their master. 



THE CASE OF GUARAS 357 

To Mendoza's intercession for the unhappy Guaras, 
with whom the new ambassador had Httle sympathy 
as a plebeian and bungler in State affairs, Elizabeth 
replied angrily that if he had been a subject of any 
other King but Philip she would have hanged him 
long ago, as he had been plotting against her with 
the Queen of Scots and English rebels. She would 
get rid of him, she said, by and by, when she had 
squeezed some more information from him. Once, 
in June, 1578, Guaras was brought out of prison 
and told by the Council that he would have to leave 
the country in ten days ; but, instead of accepting 
the decision humbly, he raised an altercation, again 
claiming diplomatic privilege, with the result that 
he was promptly sent to solitary confinement in the 
Tower again, though both Mendoza and Don Juan 
had received money from Spain to be spent in bribes 
for his help and defence.'' 

^ The unhappy Guaras remained in prison, treated with the 
greatest severity, until May, 1579. Mendoza appears to have 
pressed his case rather languidly, unwilling to embitter national 
relations further for the sake of so plebeian and insignificant a 
person as Guaras. A wealthy brother of the latter, named 
Gombal de Guaras, came to London early in 1579 to try 
whether bribery could release the prisoner. Mendoza was 
furiously angry at this interference, and had nothing but 
scorn for GombaFs boastful tactics on 'Change. Gombal spent 
large sums of money to forward the release, and notwithstand- 
ing Mendoza's assertion that Guaras would have been released 
earlier but for his brother's boasts and turbulence it is doubtful 
whether the poor man would ever have got out at all without 
this expenditure. All sorts of hard conditions were imposed 
upon Guaras on his release. All his debts had to be paid and 
his maintenance in prison ; he had to leave England at once 
without communicating with anybody, and was never again to 
return. He left England a ruined man, and died in 1584 at his 
birthplace, Tarrazona, and later his heirs prayed unsuccessfully 



358 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Generally speaking, the parties in Elizabeth's Court 
were now sharply divided in policy, and Mendoza 
promptly found who were his friends and who his 
foes. Cecil and Sussex, particularly, with Controller 
Crofts in a humbler way, were opposed to the open 
provocation of Spain by the support of the Flemish 
rebels ; Leicester and Walsingham, whom Mendoza 
rarely mentions without the epithet "devilish heretic," 
being determined, if possible, to bring matters to a 
crisis between Elizabeth and Philip whilst the war 
in the Netherlands paralysed the latter. Elizabeth 
herself leant now to one side, now to another, always 
balancing counsel against counsel. How suddenly 
and convincingly she could change is seen in her 
attitude towards Mendoza directly she heard that 
AleuQon and his French force, mainly Huguenots, 
had crossed the frontier into Flanders early in July, 
1578, at the request of the States, and had thrown 
themselves into Mons. Alencon had long been trying 
to convince the Queen that upon her alone, and not 
upon his brother the King of France, would he 
depend in everything, and his professions of love 
for her were unabated, but this alarmed her. 

To some extent her distrust of Alengon had been 
overcome of late, particularly as a large number of 
English troops and Germans in her pay were in 
Flanders as an antidote to him ; but only a few 
days after the startling news of Alen9on 's invasion 
reached England, Mendoza writes (19th July, 1578): 
"The Queen has been very suspicious of me hither- 
to, as she has been assured that I had come to 

for repayment of the money he had disbursed in England. — 
Spanish Calendar, vol. ii., and Espaiioles e Ingleses en el Siglo 
XVI., por Martin Hume (Madrid, 1903). 



ELIZABETH FEIGNS FRIENDSHIP 359 

perform I know not what, nor what bad office; but 
she is beginning to be undeceived, and is turning 
her eyes now more towards his Majesty. Some of 
the ministers, too, have begun to get friendly with 
me, and I can assure you [Zayas] that if his Majesty 
wishes to retain their goodwill, I see a way of doing 
it. . . . God knows the trouble I have had in getting 
her and her ministers so far, as they always want to 
see something substantial beforehand,^ this being the 
natural character of the people. I am told by a 
person in the Palace that, even in the matter of 
giving me audience readily, the Queen has been 
considerably influenced by the presents of gloves 
and perfumes I gave her when I arrived." 

It is true that Elizabeth was a glutton for presents, 
and her Councillors had itching palms for Spanish gold, 
but there were other reasons just then besides self- 
interest that made them smile upon Philip's ambas- 
sador. Not only was there a French army on Flemish 
soil, but from all sides there came to England 
alarming news of some great Catholic combination 
against Elizabeth ; the Spaniards were known to be 
supporting the Desmond rebellion in Ireland; 2 and 
at a day's notice, until she had got Alengon com- 
pletely under her thumb by the farcical marriage 

^ Philip, in reply to the suggestion to bribe the English 
ministers, orders Mendoza to send a schedule of the sums to 
be paid to each. When he has quite satisfied himself that 
they will have value for the money the latter shall be sent. 
" It is necessary, however, that before doing anything, we should 
have this information, so as not to cast our seed on stony ground, 
nor give money to people who will cheat us and laugh at us." 

^ The reason given by Elizabeth for sending Guaras back to 
prison was that she had heard anew that he had been serving as 
the agent of the Irish rebels. 



36o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

negotiations with him personally, she thought fit to 
smile upon Mendoza, and treat the moderate English 
Catholics with unwonted mildness. " I never see the 
Queen now," writes Mendoza in September, 1578, 
" without her telling me how glad she is for me to 
be here. She gives me audience freely, and, thank 
God ! I have her now in an excellent humour, whilst 
the Englishmen in general are not bad friends with 
me, as they think I shall not do anything against 
them in case of a disturbance." 

On another occasion in September, 1578, when 
Elizabeth was sounding Mendoza about sending an 
English ambassador to Spain, she said to him : "If 
you were a knave, you should not have stayed here 
so long; ... if you had been here years ago, things 
would not have reached such a condition as they did, 
by reason of Don Gerau de Spes"; and when he 
went to see her at Richmond on her return from an 
autumn progress, she became quite coquettish with 
him. She thought, she said, he must have run away 
and left her it was so long since she had seen him ; 
and, though she was somewhat aggrieved that she 
was to have no part in the pending peace negotia- 
tions between Philip and the Flemings, she told him 
that "she liked his manner of procedure." " I did not 
inspire her with suspicion ; and if a favourable peace 
was made in the Netherlands by any means, she was 
quite content not to have been a mediator, being quite 
satisfied with my explanations." Then, turning to 
him, she broached the subject really uppermost in her 
mind, namely, her much-talked-of marriage with the 
young French Prince. Did Mendoza think she ought 
to marry him ? The courtly ambassador was sure she 
would act wisely in any case; but he knew, as she 



THE POSITION NORMAL AGAIN 361 

did, that all the French wished was to prevent her 
prosperity and quietude. " I hope when you see the 
end you will approve of it," said Elizabeth, doubtless 
smiling in her sleeve ; for she alone knew what she 
intended the end to be, though Philip himself shrewdly 
guessed that " it was all pastime, and she would never 
marry any man." 

But through all this amiability to the Spaniard, 
English aid still found its way abundantly across the 
North Sea to the Protestants in arms ; and Hans 
Casinir, with 20,000 soldiers, was in Elizabeth's pay 
in the States. Philip, much as his ambassador might 
humour Elizabeth and bribe her ministers, was no 
nearer than before to the complete control of English 
policy, which alone would serve his purpose. Don 
Juan had died brokenhearted at his miserable failure 
on ist October, and this made matters somewhat easier 
for his brother Philip, as it removed the principal 
obstacle to the reconciliation of the Catholic Flemings 
to the Spanish rule. The absolute dissociation of the 
King of France from his brother Alen^on's eccentric 
vagaries in Flanders, and Elizabeth's clever beguile- 
ment of the young man, also satisfied the King of 
Spain that once more affairs were reverting to the 
old groove, in which he would have against him not 
Catholics, but only the Protestant elements of which 
Elizabeth was the main supporter. 

Again, therefore, he was able to face the problem 
of his "good sister's" overthrow. All his attempts 
previously in this direction had been disastrous for 
his instruments and discomfiting for himself. He 
had subsidised Mary Stuart, before and since her 
incarceration ; he had ineffectively supported the 
English Catholics to rebel ; he had consented to 



362 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Elizabeth's murder preparatory to his armed interven- 
tion in England; he had countenanced Stukeley's wild 
plans to capture Ireland, and supported the Desmond 
disaffection in Munster ; he had tried to bring Eliza- 
beth to her knees by stopping trade, with the result 
of nearly ruining his own subjects — but all these 
means had failed. Philip's advisers for twenty years 
had never ceased to assure him that he must boldly 
carry the war into his enemy's camp if he would 
succeed — that to win all he must risk something ; 
but he had gone on still believing in the infallibility 
of his own methods, which always aimed at binding 
others whilst himself remaining vaguely pledged or 
not pledged at all. Philip would only play when he 
held all the winning cards, and, much as his ambas- 
sadors urged upon him a policy of force towards his 
sister-in-law, he was determined to wait until Fate had 
dealt them to him. 

In August, 1578, only a few weeks before the 
death of Don Juan relieved him from his worst 
dilemma in Catholic Flanders, his rash young nephew, 
King Sebastian of Portugal, was killed in battle in 
Morocco. His heir was the old childless Cardinal 
Don Henrique, and amongst the many subsequent 
claimants Philip was the strongest. With the added 
power and great wealth of Portugal, the King of 
Spain might conquer heresy yet by force, and defy 
both England and France if needs be, for, with the 
harbours of Spain, Portugal, and the Islands closed 
to them, French and English ships would be unable 
to sail far from their own shores. The danger at 
once drew Catharine and Elizabeth together, but 
they could do nothing effectual yet, and all Philip's 
plans were laid carefully to seize the throne of 



NEW PLOTS AGAINST ELIZABETH 363 

Portugal when the aged king should die. It was 
necessary, amongst other things, for him to provide 
that both Elizabeth and Catharine, when that event 
happened, should have their hands full at home, and 
the effect of his manoeuvres is noticeable almost 
immediately. 

Mendoza had been instructed to use the greatest 
caution in all approaches to him on behalf of the 
imprisoned Mary Stuart; but in January, 1579, 
Zayas wrote to him, saying that negotiations had 
been opened by Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow, 
Mary's ambassador in Paris, and the Spanish am- 
bassador there. " If," he said, " Philip would provide 
enough money to raise four thousand troops, great 
things might be done for her and for the Catholic re- 
ligion. His Majesty is very well disposed towards it ; 
but nothing, as yet, has been decided, because, in good 
truth, the matter could only be undertaken on very 
safe grounds, and with the assurance that the effect 
would be produced, as otherwise it would be oleum 
et operain perde7''e. Send us your opinion on it." ^ 
The French intrigues in Scotland at this period (1579) 
had somewhat aroused the apprehensions both of 
Philip and Elizabeth, for Guise had sent young 
Lennox d'Aubigny, the Franco- Scot Stuart, to woo 
his cousin James, and he had succeeded beyond the 
wildest expectations. Philip was willing enough to 
foster Guise's ambitions to the extent of setting 
him against Catharine and the Huguenots; but any 
attempt at Guisan interference in Great Britain 
without his direction always alarmed him, so Men- 
doza lost no opportunity of whispering to Elizabeth 
distrust of French aims in Scotland. 
' Spanish Calendar, vol, ii. 



364 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

At the same time, still further to divert Elizabeth 
from interfering with his Portuguese plans, Philip 
allowed himself to be persuaded to help James Fitz- 
maurice and the Pope's Nuncio, Dr. Sanders, to 
land a small Spanish and Italian force in Ireland in 
the summer of 1579. The expedition was routed and 
pursued. Dr. Sanders dying miserably of want and 
exposure ; but when heartrending appeals from the 
Irish were sent to Philip for further aid, he dared 
not make open war upon England for their sake — 
that was no part of his plan yet. All he could con- 
sent to do was to join with the Pope in defraying 
the expenses of a formidable expedition, not under 
the Spanish but the Papal flag, sailing from a Spanish 
port, with eight thousand soldiers to invade Ireland, 
and hold the Catholic West for the Desmonds. The 
affair was mismanaged, and all the invaders were 
slaughtered at Smerwick, Dingle Bay (November, 
1580); but Mendoza never heard the last of it 
from Elizabeth, who in future excused all her inter- 
ference in Flanders by pointing to this kind act of 
her "good brother." It was a hint to Elizabeth 
that she was vulnerable, not only in Scotland 
by French intrigue, but in Ireland also, and that 
it behoved her to look to her own safety before 
attacking others. 

Mendoza had much cold water to throw upon the 
suggestion of Beton and the Spanish ambassador in 
Paris (with whom he was at feud) as to the subsidising 
of a rising of Catholics in favour of Mary Stuart. He, 
true Spaniard as he was, looked askance at any plan 
of the sort in which a Frenchman had a part. But 
early in 1580 the matter entered a new phase. Eliza- 
beth, for the first time in her reign, found herself 



MARY STUART AND PHILIP 365 

unpopular, in consequence of the general belief that 
she really intended to marry the young French Prince ; 
the great Jesuit propaganda was busily making ready 
to spread through England the young missionaries, 
who in the true spirit of martyrdom had pledged their 
lives to bring back England and Scotland to the Faith ; 
the power of Morton in Scotland was waning fast, 
and Lennox was in the ascendant. Everywhere the 
Catholic cause had taken new hope, thanks in great 
measure to the encouragement of Philip, in order that 
when the time came he might have a free hand in 
Portugal. 

But whilst the King of Spain was quite ready to 
utilise these priestly and other auxiliaries for his ends, 
though most of them had no idea that politics had any 
part in their propaganda, he himself would make no 
move to capture England until he knew that he, and 
no one else, would enjoy the benefit of success if 
success were attained. So long as the Pope and Guise 
were the leaders of the movement, Philip gave it his 
blessing but no more, and on the nth February, 1580, 
the old Archbishop of Glasgow, in Paris, seeing this, 
visited Vargas Mexia, the Spanish ambassador, and 
made a distinct step in advance. The Duke of Guise and 
he, he said, had persuaded Mary Stuart to place herself 
without reserve in the hands of his Catholic Majesty ; 
and the Archbishop produced a letter from Mary to 
that effect, saying that she had arranged for her son 
to be captured and sent to Spain, that Philip might 
marry him to his liking. Guise himself came secretly 
to Vargas Mexia soon afterwards, and told him that 
he had everything arranged now by the aid of the 
Scottish Catholics to overthrow Elizabeth, and if 
Philip would subsidise the affair, he (Guise) would 



366 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

undertake to prevent any French national interference.^ 
As for Mary herself, said the Archbishop, '' she was 
determined not to leave her prison until she left it to 
be Queen of England." Philip's attitude changed at 
once on hearing this ; and when a Catholic Scot, 
Fernihurst, was sent to Madrid by the party, he gave 
him a cordial reply, leaving in Mary's hands the 
arrangement for the capture and deportation of James. 
But before anything could be done, the overthrow of 
Morton in Scotland and the rise of Catholic Lennox 
d'Aubigny to supreme power gave a far wider scope 
to the plan. 

The great conspiracy of 1569-70 against Elizabeth 
had failed, owing to lack of complete co-operation of 
the various Catholic elements : the present attempt 

^ Vargas Mexia at once saw the immense importance of this 
declaration and wrote to Philip (13th February) : " Such is the 
present condition of England, with signs of revolt everywhere, 
the Queen in alarm, the Catholic party numerous, the serious 
events in Ireland, and the distrust aroused by your Majesty's 
fleet, that I really believe that if so much as a cat moved, the 
whole edifice would crumble down in three days beyond repair. 
If your Majesty had England and Scotland attached to you, 
directly or indirectly, you might consider the States of Flanders 
conquered, in which case you could lay down the law for the 
whole world." The adhesion of Guise as Philip's servant made 
all the difference. — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. It was certainly 
not the case that Guise and Beton had persuaded Mary to take 
this course. It is far more likely that she persuaded them, as 
she had seen for many years, as has been proved in the 
chapters of this book, that her only hope of eifectively estab- 
lishing her claim was to obtain Spanish support. Up to this 
time the Guises had rather obstructed this than otherwise, as 
they looked to Mary's elevation to serve their own ambitions, 
which wQve not identical with those of Philip. The Duke of 
Guise in question was Mary's first cousin, Henry of Lorraine, 
aged at this time thirty years. 



THE COMING OF THE JESUITS 367 

seemed to promise an organisation of greater ramifica- 
tions and more intimate combination. This was owing 
in great part to a new feature now first introduced. 
Those who watched the debarkation at Dover of the 
passengers from a skiff that had arrived from Calais 
on the 1 2th June, 1580, saw leap upon the shore a 
swashbuckling young captain, such as many who 
came from the Flemish war. He was a man of five- 
and-thirty, clad in a buff military coat covered with 
gold lace, and had a great, clanking rapier hung upon 
his hip, whilst a fine feather flaunted in his wide- 
brimmed hat. With him came a soldier-servant of 
humbler mien, and, after being duly searched and 
coming through the ordeal successfully, the two 
travellers swaggered upon their way. ^ The captain 
told the searcher who kindly procured him a horse 
that a friend of his, an English jeweller living at St. 
Omer, would follow him to England in a day or two. 
The jeweller, Mr. Edmunds, duly came, and also went 
on his road to Gravesend, and so by tilt-boat to 

^ If we are to believe Camden, who was a fellow-student of 
Parsons' at Balliol, this guise was not altogether strange to him. 
" He was," he says, " a violent, fierce-natured man of rough be- 
haviour. . . . When he was young the fellow was much noted 
for his singular impudency and disorder in apparel, going in great 
barrel hose, as was the fashion of hacksters in those days, and draw- 
ing also deep in a barrel of ale." Another contemporary of his, 
Archbishop Abbot, who was a Fellow of Balliol, describes him 
as being " a man wonderfully given to scoffing, and with that 
bitterness which was the cause that none of the company loved 
him." He was Bursar of Balliol — and of course a Protestant — 
until 1573, when he got into trouble over his accounts, and 
for this and other reasons he resigned his Fellowship. He 
lived abroad thenceforward until he returned, as here described, 
as Provincial of the Jesuits for England, having entered the 
Society in 1575. 



368 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

London, there to be lost like his military forerunner in 
the crowds of the capital. The captain came not to 
rest from the wars against the Spaniards in Flanders, 
but to conquer England again for the Faith, for he was 
Father Robert Parsons the Jesuit, and the jeweller 
Edmunds, who followed, sold, not jewels alone, but his 
own life for the task to which he had been dedicated 
by the Church, for he was Edmund Campion. 

These three young men were but the advance guard 
of an army of Jesuit missionaries who soon flocked 
over from the seminaries of Rheims and Rome to 
strengthen the resistance of the sorely tried Catholics 
of England and Scotland. Wherever these zealous 
clerics reached, the power of Elizabeth over her subjects 
was weakened. There were many Catholics who had 
grown tired of persecution, and were willing to 
purchase peace by open compliance with the Queen's 
laws. More there were who would have been fully 
content with even limited toleration for their observ- 
ance. But to these fiery young spirits toleration was 
a more deadly blow than persecution, and although up 
to this time the secular priests had been willing to 
concede to Catholics some appearance of outward 
conformity, the attendance at Protestant service was 
now forbidden to those of the old Faith. The result 
was almost at once a recrudescence of the persecutions 
apfainst Catholics in a crueller form than ever, with the 
inevitable result of raising a stronger and more 
fanatical religious spirit than had existed amongst the 
Catholics in England since the early days of Eliza- 
beth's reign. 

Needless to say, Mendoza soon got into touch with 
the new fighting element in the struggle against 
Elizabeth. The ambassador's feigned politeness 




ROBERT PARSONS, S.J. 
1546-1610 



MENDOZA GROWS VIOLENT 369 

towards Elizabeth had been strained almost to break- 
ing point by the news of Drake's terrible depredations 
in the Pacific ; and he had already fallen in his corre- 
spondence with his master into the same heated tone 
of indignation as his predecessors had done, urging 
the King to prompt reprisals upon these " insolent 
heretics." When Drake himself arrived with his vast 
booty, and was effusively received by the Queen, 
Mendoza's angry violence of word, and his open 
threats, earned for him exclusion from the Queen's 
presence. He was offered, indeed, a bribe of 50,000 
crowns to moderate his tone, but he replied in a rage, 
"that he would pay more than that sum himself to 
punish so great a thief as Drake." ^ 

Almost daily Mendoza's indignation v/ith Elizabeth 
became more heated. Amongst other causes of com- 
plaint was one that for the first time brought him into 
an acrimonious squabble with Elizabeth herself, though 
the occasion was a small one. The ambassador had 
been trapped into one of the usual bogus plots, 
ostensibly to betray Flushing, but really to cheat and 
betray him, and he had paid a large sum of money 
and given much information to certain Dutchmen for 
the purpose. One of the conspirators had left his son, 
a child, in Mendoza's hands as a hostage, and when 
the fraud was complete, on the 4th June, 1581, during 
the ambassador's absence, his house in the Strand was 
forcibly entered by London constables accompanied 
by the Secretary of the Prince of Orange, and the 
young hostage was taken from the custody of the 
Spaniards. The household drew their swords and 
attacked the authorities, but before the affray had 
proceeded far the ambassador himself appeared. 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 

BB 



370 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Learning that the officers were acting under the 
authority of the Council, he ordered his servants to 
put up their weapons and angrily protested against 
this violation of his domicile. 

Mendoza had avoided appearing at Court during 
the warm philandering with Alen9on and the French 
that was going on, fearing that Elizabeth might, with 
her usual artfulness, get better terms from the French 
by pretending that the Spaniards were seeking her. 
But this new insult overcame all other considerations. 
In a violent temper Mendoza demanded immediate 
reparation from the Queen. She must receive him 
at once, he said, and apologise, or he would leave the 
country and lay the matter before his master for 
redress. Elizabeth was anxious not to have an alter- 
cation with him whilst the special French embassy as 
well as Alen^on's '^nignons filled her Court, and by 
flattery and cajolery she managed to defer the un- 
pleasant interview until the French embassy had gone. 
On the 17th June, Elizabeth stood in the gallery of 
Whitehall overlooking the river, when Mendoza, who 
had landed at the private stairs, was led to her by 
Hatton, the captain of the guard. Fearing that the 
Spaniard might use angry words, she took him into a 
window embrasure out of earshot of the only two 
persons in the gallery, Sussex and Hatton, and at 
once anticipated him by complaining bitterly that 
King Philip had helped these knaves of Irish rebels 
by sending a large body of soldiers to them. Mendoza 
said he must leave that subject for another time, and 
launched into angry invective of the treatment to 
which he had been subjected. He had, he said, been 
denied rights recognised even amongst savages to the 
ambassadors of kings. He had expected to hear that 



MENDOZA LOSES HIS TEMPER 371 

she had hanged the constables the next morning ; but 
as she had not done so, he supposed they had told 
the truth when they said they acted in her name. 

Calling Sussex and Leicester to her, she ordered 
that inquiry should be made in the matter, and then 
once more started her Irish grievance, again forcing 
Mendoza to take the defensive. He made the best 
of matters, and retorted with Drake's plunder and her 
constant aid to the Netherlanders, ending by a scarcely 
veiled threat that unless she mended her behaviour 
towards his master, especially in her attitude towards 
Portugal, his vengeance would fall upon her. Elizabeth 
was rather cowed at this, and said she did not want to 
quarrel with her good brother ; the King of France 
had done more harm in the matter of Portugal than 
she had. To this Mendoza retorted curtlythat if the 
King of France did evil that was no reason why she 
should. Mendoza afterwards snubbed and hectored 
Cecil and the Council, and left the Palace in no very 
pacific frame of mind. "If I had not shown spirit," 
he wrote to the King, in giving him an account of the 
interview, " which is the thing that moves the Queen 
and her ministers most, such is their insolence that 
probably I should never have been able to get confer- 
ence with them. This attitude alone has enabled me 
to hold my own with them until now, thus gaining 
time for matters to develop themselves."^ Notwith- 

^ A few months later, when Mendoza sought audience of the 
Queen, to remonstrate by Phihp's orders with her about her aid 
to Don Antonio, Leicester and Hatton strongly opposed an 
audience being granted, whilst Cecil, who always advocated a 
conciliatory course with Spain, insisted upon Mendoza being 
received. " Leicester, whilst he was at supper lately, said that 
he would either turn me out of here or lose his life and property 
in the attempt ; whilst Hatton, in the presence chamber in the 



372 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

standing his self-satisfaction, it is clear that Mendoza 
got the worst of the interview with the Queen, for 
although she was compliant on the unimportant point 
of the violation of domicile, the boy was never 
restored, and she assumed the position of the injured 
party about Ireland, as well as preventing Mendoza 
from making a formal reclamation about Drake's 
plunder. 

But soon there came a new grievance to ex- 
acerbate the irritation of the Spaniards. Alba had 
been summoned from his retirement to conquer 
Portugal for Philip on the death of the old Cardinal 
King. The many claimants to the Crown were 
mostly timid and unready, whilst Philip's power was irre- 
sistible, and Alba marched through Portugal, with the 
King in his wake, brushing aside such slight attempts 
as were made to stay him in the interests of the only 
Portuguese claimant who showed fight at all — the 
doubtfully legitimate Don Antonio, Prior of Ocrato, 
who had at first been accepted by his countrymen as 
their Sovereign. He had fled before Alba's advance, 
and had been a fugitive for months past — some said 
in Brazil, some in Azores, and some in France. 
Wherever he was, he carried with him jewels of 
inestimable value, and such a man in the hands of 
Philip's enemies might be made a powerful weapon 



hearing of the household, cried that he would do his best to get 
me expelled, for the Queen trembled every time I asked for 
audience. When he was asked by a friend whether this was 
because I spoke rudely to her, he replied : No, it was not that, 
for no ambassador was more courteous and respectful, but I 
communicated things in such a way that she trembled when she 
heard me." — Mendoza to the King, ist October, 1581, Spanish 
Calendar, vol. iii. 



DON ANTONIO IN ENGLAND 373 

against the King of Spain. Rumour was busy as to 
Don Antonio's movements, and Mendoza's spies had 
much to tell, most of which was untrue. But it was 
noticed at the end of June, 1581, that Elizabeth's 
Portuguese-Jew physician, Lopez, was very busy and 
important, posting backwards and forwards between 
London and Dover, and soon Mendoza learnt that a 
party of Portuguese had landed there, amongst whom 
one was treated with marked respect and considera- 
tion. He was described as being " under the middle 
height, very dark and thin, with a spare face, a 
grizzled beard, and greenish-grey eyes." 

This man Mendoza, from the description, at once 
recognised as Don Antonio, the so-called King of 
Portugal, proclaimed by Philip a rebel with a heavy 
price upon his head. Before even he had had 
time to verify his suspicions, Mendoza peremptorily 
demanded audience of Elizabeth to complain of her 
thus sheltering the Pretender. The Queen's ministers, 
through the Earl of Sussex, flatly refused him access 
to their mistress for any such purpose unless he 
brought fresh special letters from Philip ; and as, he 
says, he was determined to have no more pros and cons 
with intermediaries who simply talk nonsense and then 
repudiate what they say, blaming the messengers, he 
wrote a haughty letter to Elizabeth herself, threaten- 
ing to leave England instantly unless audience was 
accorded to him. Elizabeth was hunting at Eltham 
when the letter was handed to her, and as she read 
it she changed countenance. Through Hatton, who 
was by her side, she replied to the bearer, " that if 
the ambassador, for reasons of health or other private 
causes, wished for his passports he could have them ; 
but that the Queen had not the slightest desire that 



374 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

he should leave her Court, or that she should break 
with the King of Spain." 

Two or three days afterwards, however, thanks 
to Cecil, Mendoza was led up a secret stair into 
the Queen's private chamber, where she was with 
Leicester, Sussex, Hatton, and Walsingham. " I 
suppose," began Elizabeth as soon as she saw 
him, " you have come to give me some satisfaction 
about Ireland." " That, your Majesty," he replied, 
"as I told you before, is a matter concerning 
the Pope, not my master." She had, he con- 
tinued, refused to receive him for nearly a year, 
pending her investigation of the case. Elizabeth 
angrily swore that she had never sent him such a 
message. Until he could bring her a fresh letter 
from Philip excusing this Irish business, she would 
have no more to say to him ; and she thought that 
he had done his master a poor service in giving her 
the answer he had done. " If I have done ill to my 
master, madam," he replied, " I have a head to pay 
for it ; and although as the King's minister I am 
bound to render an account to him of my acts, I 
thank God that He has granted me such a noble 
ancestry as alone would prevent me from failing in 
my duty to my Sovereign, if for no other reason but 
to leave unsullied the scutcheon of Mendoza." ^ "She 
screamed out louder than before at this, saying that I 
was to blame for everything that had happened, to 
which I replied smilingly that she was speaking as a 
lady, those of her sex usually displaying most annoy- 
ance at the things that were done in their interest. 
It was no small service I had done her, I said, in 
patiently awaiting her pleasure so long." 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



STRAINED RELATIONS 375 

In the heated altercation that ensued, Mendoza 
seized an opportunity of mentioning the real object 
of his visit, namely, the arrival of Don Antonio. She 
prevaricated for a long time, and finally retorted that 
if Don Antonio was in England, the rebel Earl of 
Westmorland was not only in King Philip's dominions 
but enjoyed a pension from him. She had not made 
up her mind yet, she said, whether she should help 
the Portuguese or not, but she was determined not to 
surrender any one to be killed ; and if she did not 
choose to give him up it would not be she, but Philip, 
who had first violated the old treaties. Upon this 
Mendoza made a formal demand for the surrender 
of Don Antonio in accordance with the international 
agreement, and was curtly refused. 

Thus every day the breach between Elizabeth and 
her brother-in-law grew wider, and Mendoza followed 
in the footsteps of de Spes and Guaras. Don Antonio 
was welcomed at Court with royal honours, and was very 
soon borrowing money on his jewels to fit out expedi- 
tions to the Azores, which still held out in his favour. 
The Queen herself blew hot and cold. If Antonio 
succeeded in capturing the throne of Portugal again, 
she wished him to be beholden to her for it and not 
to the French, whilst she was determined not to be 
drawn into open war with Philip for him unless she 
could manoeuvre the King of France into the same 
position. Philip wrote to Elizabeth himself, begging 
her to expel or surrender the rebel Pretender, and 
Mendoza continued to press her, often intemperately, 
on the subject ; but she always countered with 
Ireland, the refugee Desmonds, Ridolfi, and the 
Earl of Westmorland ; and usually succeeded in 
getting up a wrangle with the heated ambassador, 



Z1(^ TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

which placed him at a disadvantage. To prevent 
Philip from proceeding to extremities against her, 
and to keep the King of France from breaking 
away, the marriage dealings with Alen9on were 
carried by her to a point from which all observers 
believed she could never extricate herself. But her 
tactics, risky as they really were at this time, were 
successful in their main object, namely, in weakening 
Philip's power on every hand, and making it im- 
practicable for him to avenge himself by force. 

The English Catholic party had already felt the 
cruel consequences of the renewed Jesuit activity. 
Campion, the most fearless of the young missionaries, 
with two brethren, suffered cruel martyrdom with un- 
shaken constancy in December, 1581, and scores of 
other priests and laymen were under sentence of 
death,! whilst throughout the country recusants were 
hunted with merciless vigour, not, of course, for 
religion, said Elizabeth's officers, but as disobedient 
and disloyal subjects. Most of the active Catholic 
nobles were now in exile, and it was clear that no 

^ Mendoza, writing to Philip on the 1st October, 1581, dwells 
upon the terrible sufferings of the Catholics, and incidentally 
reveals how entirely now he had identified himself with those 
whom the Queen's Government held to be disaffected. Not 
even the gifts of friends to the imprisoned Catholics, he says, 
may be given to the individuals, but are divided amongst all the 
prisoners. " They are incarcerated with crowds of thieves, and 
are left to die of hunger amongst them, in order that their 
torment may be the greater. If any one goes to visit them 
he is at once arrested, and consequently most of the gifts 
are sent through me and are distributed by my servants, the 
Catholics alone receiving them. In like manner I take charge 
of the money sent by the Catholics who have fled abroad, 
and of the sums given by others for the Seminaries of Rheims 
and Rome." — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



MENDOZA AND THE CATHOLICS 377 

armed rising in England against the Queen's Govern- 
ment was now possible, except with very powerful help 
from abroad. But in Scotland matters were entirely 
different. Morton had fallen, and the half- French 
Lennox d'Aubigny, a Catholic, was the most power- 
ful force in the country. His French ancestry had 
caused the Spaniards to look askance at him for a 
time ; but the declaration of Guise to the Spanish 
ambassador in Paris, that Mary Stuart in future would 
look alone to Philip for direction, somewhat disarmed 
Mendoza, and, despairing of striking at Elizabeth by 
other means, the ambassador turned to this quarter to 
aid him in his vengeance. 

Philip had commanded him to continue to console 
and encourage the imprisoned Mary, and in Sep- 
tember, 1 58 1, referring to his correspondence with 
her, the ambassador opens a new chapter in his 
activities in England. He has, he says, been trying 
in every way — of course, through the Jesuit mission- 
aries mainly — to convince the Scots how advantageous 
it would be for King James if Scodand were formally 
to return to the Catholic Church ; but for fear of 
driving Elizabeth into the arms of the French, if 
she knew it, he has had, he says, to work very 
cautiously and secretly. He then goes on to say 
that he had just held a private meeting with some 
leading English Catholics, especially the brothers 
Tresham, and had urged upon them that the best 
way to cause trouble to Elizabeth would be for 
Scotland to submit to the Holy See. Even if Philip's 
other cares allowed of his sending a large force to 
England, such a course would be impossible owing 
to French jealousy. Yes, admitted the Treshams 
sorrowfully, the English Catholics were now so 



Z7^ TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

downhearted and crushed that a risino- in England 
was Impossible unless King Philip sent a great fleet 
and army fit to conquer the country, which they saw 
he could not do. The Irish, too, were not to be 
depended upon, and they agreed that the only way 
to gain England now was by winning Scotland first 
for the Church. 

The idea took root, and a meeting of six English 
Catholic peers and several gentlemen thereupon took 
a joint oath of fidelity to devote all their means 
and energies to this end. The confederates, with 
Mendoza's approval, despatched one of the senior 
Jesuit missioners, Father Creighton, to Scotland to 
broach the matter to Lennox d'x^ubigny, saying 
that if James would embrace the Church the English 
Catholics would rise, have him proclaimed heir of 
England, and release his mother, but if he refused 
they promised to adopt another candidate as Eliza- 
beth's successor. D'Aubigny was to be entertained 
with the notion that help would be forthcoming from 
France and the Pope, as well as from Philip ; but 
this was only intended to be a blind, for Mendoza 
specially warned the plotters that nothing should be 
said to Frenchmen about it, " in order to prevent 
it from being hindered by the fear that it is a plan 
of your Majesty alone." " They agree with me in 
this, as they are all Spanish and Catholic at heart, 
and do not wish to have anything to do with 
France." 

Creighton went on his way to Scotland in disguise, 
and in the meanwhile the relations between Eliza- 
beth and Mendoza became more strained than ever. 
Philip had instructed him in October to address the 
Queen strongly about the unconcealed encourage- 



A NEW GRIEVANCE 379 

ment she was giving to Don Antonio. For some 
time Mendoza asked for audience in vain. Eliza- 
beth was at Nonsuch, and all sorts of excuses were 
given for her declining to receive him. Mendoza, 
chafing under what he calls " her insolent and out- 
rageous " treatment of him, at last sent a servant of 
his to Burghley, positively to demand audience of the 
Queen when she arrived at Richmond. The reply 
brought back in Burghley's words was ominous. 
" Sir, I must tell you the truth ; the Queen is at 
present alone, unattended by Councillors, and as 
Don Bernardino is to bring letters to the Queen 
from so great an enemy of hers as his master, it 
is meet that he should be received accordingly." 

They kept Mendoza fuming for several days 
longer before he was received ; and when he entered 
the presence chamber at Richmond, boiling over 
with wounded pride, he found the Queen no longer 
the smiling coquette she had formerly been with 
him. Seated upon a tabouret under the canopy, 
with Sussex and Lord Admiral Clinton standing 
by her, she refrained from rising and advancing to 
receive him, as was her wont, and welcoming him with 
a greeting in Italian. Instead of that she sat frown- 
ing as he bowed low before her, the first words she 
said being to complain that she was suffering from a 
pain in her hip. Mendoza expressed his sorrow that 
he should have to trouble her with business in such 
circumstances, but she made no reply, and left him 
standing uncovered. " How about the letter you say 
you have from the King ? " she snapped at last, and 
he handed her the King's demand for Don Antonio's 
surrender, which she read with a clouded brow. 
" You know very well," she said, "that Don Antonio 



38o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

has left England ; but I can tell you that if I had 
chosen to help him your King's fleets from the Indies 
would not be where they are now, and Portugal, 
perchance, would not be so tranquil " — all this, as 
Mendoza says, with much browbeating and vocifera- 
tion. 

"What else have you to say?" asked the Queen tartly; 
and in answer Mendoza, in high and mighty strain, 
began to talk about the power of his master's fleets, 
and how those who dared to attack them would get 
well trounced. She had helped the rebel Antonio, he 
said, she had called him " King," she had let him sail 
from the Thames with English ships and arms from 
the Tower to attack his sovereign, the London mer- 
chants had lent him money on his jewels, and much 
more to the same effect. His King, already offended 
by the way she had helped the Flemish rebels, was 
doubly resentful now. What more could she do, asked 
Mendoza, even if she were at open war? To all of 
which Elizabeth replied boldly. As for Don Antonio, 
she had helped him and still would do so ; but she 
knew not what the ambassador meant by his other 
complaints. " This was said," continues Mendoza, 
"with the most terrible insolence; and as I saw her 
evil intent, I replied that I had been here for over 
three and a half years ; but as it appears she had heard 
nothing in all this time of the complaints I had con- 
stantly been making, and would find no remedy for 
them, it would be necessary to see whether cannon 
would not make her hear better. "In answer to this 
Elizabeth, for a wonder, replied calmly and in a low 
voice that he need not think to threaten or frighten 
her, or she would put him into a place where he could 
not say a word. In future he might negotiate with 



AN ANGRY INTERVIEW 381 

her Council, but as she had no ambassador In Spain 
she would not receive him herself. 

Mendoza thought probably that he had gone too far, 
as he certainly had ; for Philip, as we shall see later, 
had no intention, or indeed ability, at this time 
(October, 1581) to attempt the conquest of England. 
He did not desire to threaten, Mendoza said ; he was 
in her power and of course she could do as she liked 
with him, but whatever she did, thank God ! King 
Philip would avenge him. Elizabeth then ordered 
every one out of the room but the two Councillors, to 
whom in angry tones she repeated Mendoza's threat 
about cannon, and her reply. " I smiled to hear her 
relate this with so much fury and agitation, and 
remarked that I would not waste time on that point. 
Monarchs, I knew, were never afraid of private 
individuals, and above all she, who was a lady so 
beautiful that even lions would crouch before her. 
She is so vain and flighty that her anger was at 
once soothed on hearing this, and she began to relate 
how thankful your Majesty ought to be to her for 
having refused help to the Flemish rebels. All she 
had done was to prevent the French from taking 
possession of your territory." Thenceforward to the 
end of the long interview Elizabeth played off the 
Spanish support of the Irish rebels, the subsidising of 
the northern rebellion, and the intrigues of de Spes, 
against Mendoza's complaints of her help to Orange, 
the depredations of Drake, and the reception of Don 
Antonio ; and the exchange of grievances ended by 
Elizabeth coldly saying that she would receive the 
ambassador no more until the King sent her some 
satisfaction, to which he retorted by saying that he 
would prefer to do business with the Council. As he 



382 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

turned to go and was already some paces from the 
Queen he heard her heave a deep sigh, and say in 
Italian, evidently intended to reach his ear, " I 
would to God that each one had his own and was at 
peace." ^ Mendoza, humiliated and embittered at the 
course of events, which he ascribed entirely to 
Leicester and Hatton, thenceforward became a more 
virulent enemy of Elizabeth than ever de Spes had 
been. In the next letter after the interview just de- 
scribed he prayed Philip to avenge himself by seizing 
all English property in his dominions ; but the King 
had tried that game before to his cost, and dared 
not run the risk again, nor would he listen to 
Mendoza's earnest prayers to anticipate the intrigues 
of Leicester to have him expelled from England by 
recalling him himself. 

When, therefore, Father Creighton returned, in 
October, 1581, from his mission to Scotland, Mendoza 
was ripe for any plan which promised injury to 
Elizabeth. The Jesuit told him how he had been 
secretly conveyed across the Scottish border, and had 
conferred with Lennox, Eglinton, Huntly, Caithness, 
and Seton, who had warmly consented to Catholic mis- 
sioners being sent — ■'' on condition that they brought 
money for their own maintenance." They would have 
King James approached, too, and told that his one 
hope of obtaining the English succession would be for 
him to embrace Catholicism and make friends with 
Spain. Neither Lennox nor the King was to be 
frightened with the suggestion that the French 
were to be thrown over : but Seton, who appears 
to have known James's character well, proposed 
that his greed and ambition might be worked upon 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 188. 



THE JESUIT CONSPIRACY 383 

by his being shown how much more effectual a 
friend Spain would be to him than France. Father 
Parsons was in London when Creighton arrived, and 
he and his colleague Hey wood were long closeted with 
Mendoza to discuss who should be the pioneer mis- 
sioners to Scotland. Creighton thought that Father 
Parsons, himself, and Heywood should go, '*as they 
would need to be very learned and virtuous men." 
Parsons, still in his captain's garb, ran over to Rheims 
to consult the Principal of the English Seminary, 
Dr. Allen ; and at Mendoza's instance it was 
agreed that Parsons could not well be spared from 
England, and that Dr. Allen should appoint fresh men 
for the Scottish mission. 

The six English Catholic lords who had first 
arranged the matter with Mendoza were now in 
prison : Catholics were being savagely persecuted 
everywhere, and it was evident that the scheme for 
upsetting Elizabeth by means of a Catholic move- 
ment in Scotland must be managed by Spanish agents 
in France and Dr. Allen, "as the Queen and her 
heretics are served here by such a multitude of spies 
that the Queen of Scots herself is in great alarm.' 
But above all, says Mendoza, though the affair must 
be managed in France, " the French must have no 
suspicion that your Majesty has anything to do with 
it." As may be supposed, Mary Stuart was a keen 
participant in the scheme. In April, 1 581, six months 
previously, she had sent a message through Arch- 
bishop Beton to the new Spanish ambassador in 
Paris, Tassis. "Things," she said, "were never in 
better form in Scotland than now for a return to 
ancient conditions, so that English affairs could be 
dealt with afterwards from there. Her son was 



384 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

determined to be a Catholic, and inclined to break 
with Elizabeth as soon as he could be sure of sub- 
stantial help." This help Mary earnestly begged of 
Philip through Tassis, and asked that it should be 
landed first in Ireland, ready to cross to Scotland 
as soon as the treaty was signed. 

For some reason or another Mary conceived some 
distrust of Tassis, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, 
and of Beton ; and as soon as she heard of the result 
of Father Creighton's mission to Scotland, she wrote 
direct to Mendoza to tell him that she had partly con- 
sented to join her son with herself in the sovereignty of 
Scotland, which course had been urged upon her by 
the French, but that she was still determined in all 
things to follow the direction of the King of Spain in 
her affairs. She had understood from the first that 
from France, divided as it was, she had nothing 
effective to hope for. Her son and the Catholic 
Scots might desire to keep alive the ancient alliance 
with France, but Mary wanted more than that : she 
needed rescue from England, and this could only be 
effected by a Power that was willing to go to war with 
England if necessary for her sake, which she knew 
France, with its powerful Huguenot element and 
Catharine de Medici at the helm, would never do. 
Mary was suspicious, and grew even more so, of 
Guise's interference in her affairs, which she saw was 
not occasioned by the desire to benefit her person- 
ally, but to increase his power by keeping hold of 
Scotland. Mendoza, of course, threw cold water 
upon the suggestion that Mary should recognise 
James as King on the recommendation of France, 
and by gaining Mary's entire confidence, gradually 
worked her affairs into his own hands. 



PROGRESS OF THE PLOT 385 

The priests sent to Scotland were meeting with 
great success ; and James himself told Creighton that, 
though out of policy he was obliged to appear in 
favour of the French, in his heart he would rather be 
Spanish. Parsons, whilst, fortunately for himself, he 
was abroad, though just about to embark for England, 
had been proclaimed a traitor and a price set upon his 
head ; so that in future his sphere of activity was in 
Scotland and on the Continent, where he continued to 
direct English affairs with ever-increasing violence 
against the Queen and her faith. It is characteristic 
of Spanish methods that, though even Mary protested 
against it, all the priests sent by Dr. Allen to Scotland 
were to be Ensflishmen, because it was feared that 
Scotsmen might have other ends and incline to France. 
Above all, it was provided that the French should 
have no idea that Spain was behind this purely 
religious propaganda. Elizabeth's Government, sus- 
picious already of the Catholic regime in Scotland, 
was well aware that something was going on in which 
Mendoza was concerned, ^ and keen vigilance was 
kept upon the Border. " So far as can be seen, 
this business is proceeding most hopefully," writes 
Mendoza in December, 1581, "and is under God's 
protection ; for, whilst these two priests were on the 
English Border one night, a great search was made 
in every house in the neighbourhood, as the Queen 
had been informed that some English priests would 
endeavour to go to Scotland, but God ordained that 
they should escape almost by a miracle." ^ Tresham 
was in prison, but priests carried messages backwards 

^ Herll to Leicester, 7th November, 1581. — Domestic 
Calendar. 
2 Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 
cc 



386 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

and forwards between him and Mendoza, so that the 
plot was kept going ; and the fortitude of the Catholic 
prisoners under torture in refusing to divulge the 
names of their associates had drawn into the new 
combination a large number of sympathisers, whilst 
Mary herself, gaining ever more confidence in 
Mendoza personally, was urging him to assure King 
Philip that the time was propitious for him to take 
some bold and decided action in her favour in 
Scotland. 

This was the hopeful condition of affairs when 
Father Holt, a young Jesuit sent by Parsons 
and Creighton from Scotland, arrived in London. 
Tresham and the other English leaders being in 
prison, he had been directed to a disguised English 
priest in London, who would take him to the person 
who was to receive his message. Holt, like the rest 
of the rank and file of the Jesuit missioners, had no 
suspicion that a political object was behind their 
Scottish propaganda, and was astounded when he was 
led to the house of the Spanish ambassador to give 
his report. What he had to say was important. 
Everything, he reported, was going excellently in 
Scotland. The lords were trying by every means 
to convert the King ; but they wished to obtain 
Queen Mary's permission, if he remained obstinate, 
"to force the King to open his eyes and to see the 
truth." Failing this, they would, if the Queen autho- 
rised them, depose or transport James until Mary's 
arrival in her realm. But, continued Holt, they 
considered it necessary, if they were to succeed in 
their aim, to be able to count positively upon foreign 
armed assistance to subdue the heretics and provide 
against any interference from England. If they had 



PROGRESS OF THE PLOT 387 

two thousand soldiers from abroad they would be suffi- 
cient for the purpose. Where could they look, he asked, 
for such assistance ? Not to France or to the Guises, 
for several reasons, and they hoped that Queen Mary 
would prevail upon the Pope and the King of Spain 
to send Spaniards or Italians. He begged that 
Mendoza would convey this to Mary and to Philip, 
and to have more English priests sent into Scotland 
for the propaganda, "only they must bring money 
for their own maintenance." 

To Mary Mendoza sent the message of the Scottish 
Catholics in a somewhat softened form, in order not to 
arouse her maternal solicitude for James ; but to his 
own Sovereign, Philip, he wrote almost vehemently, 
praying him to seize the opportunity for striking a 
fatal blow at Elizabeth. " With the two thousand 
soldiers they ask for, he says, the Scots might defy 
this Queen . . . and the whole North of England 
would be disturbed, the Catholics there being in a 
majority, and the opportunity would be taken by the 
Catholics in other parts' of the country to rise when 
they knew that they had on their side the forces of a 
more powerful Prince than the King of Scotland." ^ 
There was no more concealment of Mendoza's opinion 
beneath a veil of assumed humility : he not only urged 
Philip to ensure the victory of Scottish orthodoxy by 
force, but to aid a rising of English Catholics over the 
Scottish Border. The opportunity looked a tempting 
one, for it provided for the removal of the doubtful 
James, and the plan might be carried out (if the 
Scottish lords were to be depended upon) without 
giving to Elizabeth the legal right to interfere. 

The experienced Cardinal de Granvelle, who was 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



388 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

governing Spain in Philip's absence in Portugal, was 
almost as enthusiastic in its advocacy as Mendoza 
himself. ** The affair is so important," he wrote to 
Philip, " both for the sake of religion and to restrain 
England, that no other can equal it. By keeping the 
Queen of England busy we shall be ensured against 
her helping Alengon (in Flanders) or daring to 
obstruct us elsewhere." ^ Mary Stuart was just as 
eager, but had wider views than Granvelle, seeing 
clearly with her great penetration, if she was to be 
Queen of Britain, the absolute need for organising the 
English Catholics, whilst keeping the French out of 
the affair and not arousing unduly the suspicions 
of Elizabeth. "In the event," she wrote, "of the 
Scots having the support requested, and the Queen 
of England attempting to interfere, which might give 
an occasion for the English Catholics to rise, it would 
be necessary to have this latter part of the business 
arranged beforehand, but in such a way that they 
should not understand what is intended, or have any 
idea until everything was ready to burst forth." 

Holt went back to Scotland with a promise from 
Mendoza, which he certainly was not authorised by 
Philip to give, that the two thousand men asked for 
should be sent to their aid, and the English Catholics, 
or such of them as were still at liberty, were con- 
ciliated by means of Lord Henry Howard, who was 
very heavily bribed by Philip, and thenceforward 
became the principal Spanish agent at Elizabeth's 
Court. The plot looked, indeed, a promising one 
under the sole guidance of Mendoza ; and all were in 
high hopes that Mary Stuart's fortune was at last to 
take a turn, when Father Creighton arrived in Paris 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



A MUDDLED CONSPIRACY 389 

directed to Tassis, the Spanish ambassador, with a 
letter from the Duke of Lennox. " Understanding," 
he says, "from the missioners that the Pope and the 
King of Spain desire to make use of him for the 
design they have in hand to restore the CathoHc 
faith in Scotland and release the Queen ... he is 
prepared to employ his life and estate in carrying out 
the same, on condition that he is supplied with all 
things set forth in the statement taken by Father 
Creighton." This letter was dated early in March, 
1582, and reached Tassis in May, having been 
brought to him by Creighton and Parsons.^ The 
plan was a perfectly new one to Tassis, as Mendoza 
in London had been the sole intermediary purposely 
chosen by Mary and the originators of the plot, in 
order to exclude any probability of French partici- 
pation ; and Philip, to his surprise, was now informed 
of the affair by his ambassador in Paris, as if for the 
first time. Why Lennox should have chosen to send 
his adhesion to Paris instead of to Mendoza is not 
quite clear ; but, being naturally attached to Guisan 
interests, it is probable that he wished to ensure that 
his French patrons should not be excluded. 

^ Creighton had been directed to go to Rouen on the way to 
Paris, in order that he might consult Parsons, who was then 
there to be in touch with England. The Duke of Guise was 
near by, at his Castle of Eu, and Lennox's letters to him by 
Creighton were also delivered at the same time. Even Father 
Parsons at this period had not penetrated the antagonism of the 
views of Philip II. and Guise, though he subsequently became 
the leader of the purely Anglo-Spanish party opposed altogether 
to the interference of the French influence and the inclusion of 
James VL in the plans for the subjugation of England. At this 
time and for a short time afterwards Parsons was in close touch 
with Guise. 



390 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

In any case, it does not need much knowledge of 
Philip's character to foresee that such inept manage- 
ment as this would upset the whole business as far 
as he was concerned. The demands of Lennox, as 
stated by Crelghton, were ridiculous. The Scottish 
Lords had promised Mendoza through Holt that if 
two thousand foreign troops landed they would be 
able to effect the revolution, and this was a number 
that Philip could have provided ; but here was 
Lennox demanding twenty thousand men paid for 
eighteen months and a large quantity of munitions 
of war of all sorts. He must have, he says, twenty 
thousand crowns in money sent to Scotland immedi- 
ately for fortifications, &c., and a further subsidy to 
raise Scottish troops ; he asks that the troops should 
be of various nationalities and placed under his 
command, and if the attempt failed and he lost 
his Scottish estate in consequence, he wanted a 
guarantee from the Pope and Philip that an estate 
of equal value should be given to him elsewhere. 
He proposes himself to leave Scotland at the most 
critical juncture, and to go to Paris to make final 
arrangements, as soon as he hears that the Pope and 
the King of Spain are pledged to the enterprise. 

Tassis, not unnaturally, remarked to the priests that 
Lennox was asking for a good deal, and he learned 
from them that the Duke of Guise had been consulted, 
and thought that fewer men would do. Parsons then 
took up the story, and was quite sure that the 
Catholics of England would rise immediately the 
Scottish affair began ; and it was soon evident, even 
to Tassis, who had been previously quite in the dark 
about it, that not only Guise but many other people, 
clerical and lay, had been drawn into the business, 



A MUDDLED CONSPIRACY 391 

since one of the Jesuits was to go to Madrid, others 
to Rouen and to Rome ; and the Nuncio, Archbishop 
Baton, and Dr. Allen were also parties to the pro- 
posals. The idea that Lennox should be in supreme 
command, and that French troops were to be 
included, alone would have sufficed to render the 
plan abortive, apart from the other quite extravagant 
conditions he imposed. Lennox wrote a somewhat 
similarly foolish letter to Mary Stuart, saying that 
the Jesuit Creighton had promised him fifteen 
thousand men ; and that he, Lennox, was to go to 
France to raise a large force of Frenchmen. Mary 
was furious at such impracticable nonsense, and wrote 
to Mendoza begging him to restrain the bungling 
priests, as she was trying to do, and once more to get 
the matter into his own hands. " I am advising 
Lennox," she writes, "to stay in Scotland, and I dis- 
approve entirely of his plan to raise men in France. 
You may inform these Jesuits, too, that I will not 
on any account allow anything concerning this matter 
to be done in my name . . , and I do not approve of 
sending any one on my behalf to negotiate direct with 
the Pope and King Philip." 

Mendoza also was full of scorn for such muddling, 
and the whole scheme was thrown into confusion. 
Guise, as soon as he was informed by Lennox's 
letter brought by Creighton, travelled from Eu to 
Paris and met Tassis secretly at Beton's house. 
He, too, was full of far-reaching, ill-digested plans, 
his main object evidently being to prevent Spanish 
troops from being sent to Scotland, in order to avoid, 
as he says, French jealousy, but really because he 
feared Philip's power. His plan was to raise a large 
mixed force to be sent by the Pope to Scotland, 



392 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

whilst he, Guise, was to make a descent upon the 
coast of Sussex with a French force. Philip met the 
new situation in his characteristic way. So far as he 
was concerned, the plan became impossible the moment 
that Guise and the French interest were included in it, 
and he wrote to Tassis, with vague sanctimonious 
sympathy, deprecating overzeal and ordering that 
nothing more should be done in the matter until 
further orders.^ 

Father Parsons, by far the cleverest of the Jesuits, 
went to Madrid and submitted Lennox's foolish con- 
ditions to Cardinal de Granvelle and Sir Francis 
Englefield, Philip's English secretary. They both 

* '* The two Jesuit fathers who spoke to you about the Scotch 
affair must have been very zealous, but their having carried the 
matter so far as they did and communicating it to so many 
people may make it difficult to keep secret. In order that it 
may be kept as quiet as possible, you will detain the priest if he 
has not already started to come hither. You can tell him, as if 
on your own account, that in order to keep the affair quiet 
nothing more should be done till you hear from me. You may 
reply to the Duke of Lennox to the same effect, dealing with 
the matter in a way which will not lead them to think that you 
are throwing difficulties in the way for the purpose of refusing 
the aid they ask for, but only in order that it may all be managed 
on such solid foundations as to ensure success, for which we 
should all strive, as it is so greatly in the interests of God and 
the pubHc welfare." — Philip to Tassis, nth June, 1582, Spanish 
Calendar, vol. iii. Philip's message to Guise through Tassis, in 
September, is in the same tone : " You will tell him I would 
gladly have helped in the submission of Scotland, and still would 
do so if I saw really good grounds for anticipating success and a 
willingness on the part of the Pope to contribute such money 
as the case demands, as he has promised me several times. 
You may dexterously hint at coolness in that quarter, so that he 
may see that the affair is not falling through by any fault of 
mine." — Ibid. To those who know Philip's style this represents 
a determination to desist from participation. 



PHILIP'S SECRET VIEWS 393 

agreed that the bases laid down by Mendoza and 
Mary were the only practical ones, and Granvelle 
incidentally in his report on the matter throws rather 
a curious light upon the diversity of views that we see 
now existed, although he probably did not know it, 
between Philip's views with regard to England and 
his own. We shall see presently what was in Philip's 
mind ; but that of Granvelle is sufficiently revealed 
when, speaking of the fear of the Scots that the 
landing of foreign troops might endanger their 
liberties, he says : *' This is not what his Majesty 
wants, nor do I approve of it ; but that we should 
loyally help the King of Scots and his mother to 
maintain their rights, and, by promoting armed dis- 
turbance, keep the Queen of England and the French 
busy at small cost to ourselves in comparison with 
what she will have to spend, and so enable us to 
settle our own affairs better. If it had no other 
result this should suffice, but much more when we 
consider that it may lead to the re-establishment of 
the Catholic religion in those parts. When we strike 
there the Irish will pluck up courage ; and it is ad- 
vantageous that the matter should be taken in hand 
by the Duke of Guise, as it will ensure us from French 
obstruction. Since we cannot hope to hold the island 
for ourselves, Guise will not hand it over to the King 
of France to the detriment of his own kinswoman." 
He also hints at the possibility of Elizabeth's coming 
to terms with Spain and renewing the old alliance. 

This was certainly not Philip's view at this time 
(1582). He had now lost hope of conciliating Eng- 
land whilst Elizabeth was on the throne, and he was 
gradually being convinced that nothing but a great 
national conquest with purely Spanish arms would 



394 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

serve his turn. The policy of " loyally helping the 
King of Scots," and, above all, with the co-operation 
of the French, would have been useless to him except 
as a means of gaining for him uncontrolled command 
of English foreign policy, which, with James an un- 
known factor and Guise as a confederate, was uncertain. 
The idea of attacking England through Scotland, which 
some of his advisers favoured, was one that never ap- 
pealed very strongly to him after this first fiasco of 
Lennox, and it introduced an element in the situation 
which subsequently influenced him greatly, finally, 
indeed, deciding his policy. This was the jealousy 
felt by Englishmen of Scots, and a determination 
that nothing like a domination of England by a 
people whom they considered inferior should be 
allowed. Scotland and France, it must be recol- 
lected, had for centuries been looked upon by 
Englishmen as their joint enemies, whilst Spain 
and Flanders had been their friends, and it soon 
became a common saying amongst the English 
Catholics, of whom Parsons was the mouthpiece, 
that England would welcome a thousand times 
more a Spanish sovereign than a Scottish one. 
The first note of the feeling is struck in Granvelle's 
memorandum quoted above, where he says that 
Englefield is very distrustful of the Archbishop of 
Glasgow, with whom he has ceased to correspond, 
and he wishes that he (Beton) should not be made 
cognisant with this business, "which he would im- 
mediately divulge to the French." 

Whilst these events were passing in France, the 
causes for irritation between Elizabeth and Philip 
were becoming daily more grave. The Queen, 
almost at her wits' end, had managed to get rid of 



DRIFTING TO WAR 395 

her importunate suitor AlenQon, in February, 1582, 
by means of a solemn promise to marry wliich she 
never intended for a moment to keep. She had in- 
sisted upon Leicester accompanying him to Antwerp, 
where the Prince was to join Orange as the obedient 
servant of Elizabeth. To the Queen's dismay, a few 
days afterwards she learnt that Leicester had sanctioned 
by his presence the investiture of the French Prince 
with Philip's Crown of Duke of Brabant, and it seemed 
now, even to her, that the cup was full and that 
nothing could save her from the vengeance of the 
outraged Spaniard, especially as she found that the 
King of France ostentatiously disavowed her and his 
brother's action. Elizabeth railed at Walsingham and 
Leicester like a very fury, summoned Burghley from a 
sick bed to counsel her, and ended by leaving her 
French lover in the lurch. 

Far from seeking immediate vengeance, however, 
Philip's own perplexity was such, in the face of this 
new dilemma, that he contemplated a step which up 
to that time he had always repudiated with scorn. 
Writing to Mendoza in May, 1582, he orders him 
to endeavour to exacerbate Elizabeth's jealousy of the 
French in Flanders for the purpose of enlisting her 
aid as a mediator between his rebellious subjects and 
himself. Orange had just been dangerously wounded 
by a Spanish agent, ^ and it may have appeared to 
Philip that the moment was a favourable one to bring 

^ Mendoza had entertained several proposals for killing 
Orange, and it was asserted that he had been an accomplice 
in the present attempt. He was very indignant at the odium 
that this accusation brought upon him, but it is extremely likely 
to be true. He and Mary Stuart had nothing but praise for the 
crime in their letters. — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



396 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

about some settlement which, at all events, might save 
his sovereignty. " It will be well," he writes, " for 
you to discover whether it is possible for the Queen 
herself to intervene for the purpose of reconciling me 
with my subjects." He is not very sanguine, he says, 
of such an intermediary ; " and she is much more likely 
to continue her usual arts to incense my subjects 
against me, but it is worth trying " ; and to show 
how urgent was Philip's need of a peaceful settle- 
ment, he sent the large sum of 40,000 crowns to 
Mendoza to bribe Elizabeth's ministers to propose her 
mediation. 'f 

The presence of Alen^on in Flanders as sovereign, 
even under her own auspices, made Elizabeth anxious 
to learn at first hand what the Spaniards thought of 
this new provocation, and a hint was sent to Mendoza 
that she would receive him again with Philip's Portu- 
guese envoy, who had come to announce his accession 
to the Crown. She was, during the interview, very 
emphatic as to her perfect neutrality with regard to 
Portugal, "just," says Mendoza, "as if it were true, 
instead of an evident lie." Mendoza interposed by 
saying that no doubt that was her intention, but there 
were, at that moment, perhaps unknown to her, several 
ships being fitted and armed in the Thames for Don 
Antonio. What did he mean ? Elizabeth asked, and 
the ambassador gave her full particulars. Up to 
this point Elizabeth had been polite, but when she 
found that no complaint was made about Alen9on, 
she plucked up courage, and Hatton, a special enemy 
of Mendoza's, who was behind him, seems to have 
made some sign to the Queen, for her tone suddenly 
changed. "This is no time to deal with that matter," 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. Hi. 



MENDOZA IN TROUBLE 397 

she cried angrily, and Mendoza retired more wrathful 
than ever, and more determined to work his revenge. 

He had been praying for his recall for some time, 
for he was nearly blind with cataract, and his soul 
rebelled against the humiliations he had to suffer ; but 
Philip had pressed him to stay on, for nobody could 
manage the great conspiracy against Elizabeth so 
wisely and stealthily as he. He would not abandon 
his post, moreover, until Mary Stuart had consented 
to deal with a fresh ambassador, and he urged Philip 
to send a special envoy, on the pretext of claiming the 
restoration of Drake's plunder, but really to succeed 
him If Mary would show confidence in the new man. 
*' If It be profitable that I should remain here I will 
willingly sacrifice myself for a matter so closely touch- 
ing the service of God and the Increase of His Church, 
as well as serving your Majesty, since two hundred 
priests are risking their lives in the same cause, in 
face of great hardships, hunger and poverty." His 
stay in England, indeed, was a true martyrdom, only 
endured because of his hope that in union with Mary 
of Scotland he might be Instrumental In overthrowing 
Elizabeth and her Protestant ministers. They, for 
their part, repaid his hatred with enmity as bitter. 
Leicester, Hatton, and Walslngham left no stone 
unturned to make his post in England untenable. 
There was no English ambassador In Spain, they 
said, and should be no Spanish ambassador In Eng- 
land : the m„an was only a spy and a conspirator. 
It was he, said his detractors, who had planned the 
assassination of the Prince of Orange, and was the 
abettor and provider of the flock of black Jesuit crows 
who were Infesting England with their presence. Even 
the street boys in London pelted and hooted him as he 



398 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

passed,^ and he was practically excluded from Eliza- 
beth's Court. But for every fresh slight offered to 
him he became more ardent in his determination to 
make Mary Stuart Queen of Catholic Britain. The 
correspondence between them was close, for Mary 
refused to trust any other intermediary, and until the 
raid of Ruthven and the flight and death of Lennox 
finally upset the Catholic f^gime in Scotland, the hope 
of bringing back again into workable shape the plot 
that the priests and Lennox had embroiled was never 
abandoned by them. 2 

The fact of their correspondence was, of course, well 
known to Elizabeth's Government, and this made the 
ambassador's treatment the harder. Once, in May, 
1582, he was driven, by orders from the anxious King, 
to demand audience of the Queen, who replied that 
she would receive him as a private person if he liked, 
but would see him no more as ambassador until he 
brought an apology from Philip for aiding the Irish 
rebels. To this he replied haughtily in a letter, 
threatening to leave England at once and let muskets 

* Dr. Hector Nunez writes to Burghley in August, 1582, that 
Mendoza, passing through Fenchurch Street in his carriage, was 
stoned and hooted by a group of boys playing at soldiers, and 
had to take refuge in Lime Street, where the Lord Mayor, Sir 
James Harvey, lived. — Hatfield Papers, part ii. 

^ Mary wrote to him when she was deploring the confusion in 
their plans caused by the muddling of the Jesuits and Lennox : 
" There are, as you have pointed out, many objections to carry- 
ing out this enterprise from France, and I wish it to be conducted 
entirely by you, sure, as I am, of your faith and prudence. . . . 
I must therefore beg of you most earnestly to continue here, 
and thus gain for yourself the honour of God and man if the 
enterprise be successful, as you yet give me hopes that it will be. 
The principal thing is for you to remain in England, but if that 
be impossible, then in France." — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



MENDOZA ISOLATED 399 

speak for him. When Elizabeth read the letter she 
was perturbed, and softened somewhat. " God forbid," 
she said, " that she should ever break with the King 
of Spain, to whom she bore nothing but goodwill, 
. . . She hoped that Don Bernardino would not leave ; 
he could communicate with her in writing until the 
King's explanation of the Irish affair came." Writing 
to Philip in November, 1582, Mendoza says : " I have 
tried every means, overt and covert, to get into relations 
with the Queen's ministers, but they fly from me as if 
I were a rebel subject ot hers, and things have reached 
such a point that no one will speak to me or even to 
my servants." Even his heavily paid Court spies. Lord 
Henry Howard and Sir James Crofts, avoided com- 
munication with him, except when they needed money. 
The efforts of Guise and Beton to keep the Scottish 
Catholic intrigue in their own hands also tended to 
isolate Mendoza. Both he and Philip, when the news 
of the raid of Ruthven and the flight of Lennox 
reached them, recognised that the enterprise through 
Scotland was hopeless for a time, and endeavoured to 
confine Guise's energies in future to France. He was 
told how dangerous it would be for him to leave 
France with his enemies the Huguenots in possession, 
and was flattered and encouraged by Philip with the 
suggestion that the Crown of France might be his by 
Spanish aid, if Henry and his brother Alengon died 
childless, as seemed probable : " for it would be a 
public infamy if the most Christian Crown should fall, 
as may be feared, into the hands of a man who was 
not a Catholic [i.e., Henry of Navarre], besides the 
danger of this, it will be a standing disgrace to a true 
Catholic like Guise himself." Guise was proud and 
delighted that so much deference was being paid him, 



400 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

but he could hardly be expected to look at Scottish 
affairs entirely from Philip's point of view ; and, whilst 
not losing sight of his vast ambitions in France, he 
still endeavoured through Beton, Tassis, and Parsons, 
to keep his hand on the realm of his cousin. 

When Lennox passed through London in January, 
1 583, on his way to exile in France he sent his secretary 
to Mendoza — not daring to come himself — to give him 
an explanatory account of Lennox's ignominious col- 
lapse, and to inform him of his plans to return to Scot- 
land, with James's full connivance, and for an invasion 
by foreign troops in the Catholic interest. In such 
plans both Mendoza and his master had now lost hope, 
and though Lennox soon afterwards died, Guise 
himself, undeterred by Philip's flattering attempts at 
diversion, became the central pivot of the intrigue, 
abetted by Beton, Tassis, and the Jesuits, who were 
still curiously blind to the real trend of affairs. A 
new French ambassador. La Mothe, was sent to re- 
monstrate with Ruthven and the Scottish Protestants 
for keeping their King in durance, and to warn 
Elizabeth not to interfere in Scotland ; and with him 
went young de Maineville on a separate mission from 
Guise to the Scottish Catholics, for the purpose of 
reviving the plot for landing a foreign force in Scot- 
land. Beton and Tassis were, of course, parties to 
the arrangement, much to the annoyance of Mary and 
Mendoza, who thus saw all their carefully planned 
schemes thrown into confusion. James in Scotland, 
as usual, lied to everybody, and the Scottish Catholic 
party was disunited, so that Guise's agent, de Maine- 
ville, promptly saw that any present attempt to invade 
Scotland in Mary's interest would end in failure, and 
Guise changed all his plans. 






HENRI, DUG DE GUISE 

FROM AN ENGRAVING 



GUISE'S NEW PLAN 401 

On the 4th May, 1583, Tassis wrote to Philip that 
Guise, in view of the changed position in Scotland, 
had decided to negotiate with the English Catholics 
for a rising in England. " He has already carried the 
matter so far that he expects to have it put into execu- 
tion very shortly, and intends to be present in person." 
He asked for 100,000 crowns from the Pope and 
Philip, to be ready in Paris when he wanted it, though 
Tassis says that he does not expect that his Holiness 
will send much. He needed this large sum, it appears, 
principally " for one object which I dare not venture 
to mention here, but which, if it be effected, will make 
a noise in the world." This object was no other than 
the murder of Elizabeth, which was to be the prelude 
of the revolution to place Mary on the throne. Two 
days before this letter to Philip was written by Tassis 
the Nuncio in Paris wrote to the Papal Secretary of 
State, the Cardinal of Como, much more plainly. 
Guise and his brother Mayenne, he says, had arranged 
for the murder of the Queen by one of her courtiers, 
secretly a Catholic, who owed her a grudge for 
executing certain of his relations. This man had made 
the proposal to Mary, and she had refused to entertain 
it, but the Duke of Guise was less scrupulous and had 
promised the assassin 100,000 francs for the work. 
He did not ask the Pope's aid for this, but for the 
invasion of the South of England, which he. Guise, 
intended to effect immediately after the Queen had 
been killed. Neither the Nuncio nor the Cardinal, 
nor even his Holiness, had anything but praise for 
this saintly plan, and readily promised one-quarter of 
the sum needed if Philip would find the other three- 
quarters. 

Guise's ideas, as usual, were vague and scattered. 



402 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Simultaneously with this plan for murdering Elizabeth 
and invading Sussex, with the connivance of the 
English Catholics, an utterly impracticable scheme, he 
tried to keep the Scottish Catholics in hand by heavy 
bribes and to convert James. All this sinister activity 
could not be quite hidden from Elizabeth, who made 
a counter move by proposing terms for Mary's release, 
which in future would render her harmless. Mary at 
once asked the advice of Mendoza, who was quite 
shocked at the idea, and wrote to her, as he says, 
" with all possible artifice," by all means to refuse her 
liberty ; but he tells Philip his real reason : " Nothing 
could be more injurious to your Majesty's interest and 
hopes of converting this island than that the French 
should get their fingers into the matter through the 
Queen of Scotland and turn it to their own ends." ^ 
Philip agreed that it would be best to keep Mary 
where they could lay hands upon her at any moment ; 
but, perhaps influenced by the opinion of Granvelle, 
quoted in an earlier page, he asks for Mendoza's 
further opinion on the association of Guise in the con- 
templated revolution. Since he was a near relation of 
Mary's, and had the confidence of the Scottish 
Catholics and the Pope, would his co-operation, in the 
opinion of Mendoza, be open to the same objections as 
that of Frenchmen generally ? To this Mendoza gave 
a cautious, sagacious reply. There was no objection 
to Guise pulling the chestnuts out of the fire, if he 
depended entirely upon Spain, but above all Mary 
Stuart must be kept in England. 

Philip professed himself willing to provide a part of 
the money required for Guise's murderous attempt, 

* Roman Transcripts, Record Office, vols. xvi. and xvii. 



GUISE'S MURDER PLOT 403 

but bargained for a larger contribution from the Pope.^ 
Before anything could be decided, however, the ill-knit 
plan fell to pieces. Father Allen and most of the 
English Catholic exiles were in deadly earnest, and 
thought that " all this talk and intricacy was mere 
fencing." The feeling, also, of national jealousy of 
the Scots began to manifest itself strongly amongst 
them. " They suspected a tendency on the part of 
the Scots to claim a controlling influence in the new 
Empire, and, as the Scots are naturally inclined to the 
French, they would rather see the affair carried through 
with but a few Spaniards, whilst the English hate this 
idea, as their country is the principal one, and they say 
that it should not lose its predominance." ^ This 
tendency of the English exiles gradually worked upon 
Philip and his ministers, until French co-operation in 
the plans to subjugate Britain, even under the auspices 
of the Guises, was eliminated from the schemes, so 
far as Spain and the English exiles could influence 
them. 

Not many weeks elapsed before this vague plot of 
Guise to murder Elizabeth simultaneously with an 
invasion of Sussex had fallen through. On the 30th 
May, 1583, the Nuncio in Paris wrote to the Cardinal 
of Como, " I believe that the design upon the person 
of the Queen of England will come to nothing " ; and 
three weeks later Tassis wrote to Philip that the 
murder plot " is, I see, for the present, quite at an 
end, and nothing more is being said about it, so the 

^ This was an ordinary course with PhiHp when he disapproved 
of a plan proposed to him : to pretend acquiescence, but to 
propose that the Pope should find the money, which he knew 
he would not do. 

^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



404 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

funds referred to will therefore not be required." ^ The 
English Catholic exiles, led by Dr. Allen and Father 
Parsons, soon tired of such an unbusinesslike con- 
spirator as Guise, and they came to Tassis, in Paris, 
with a scheme of their own. They were already 
jealous of French and Scottish intervention in English 
affairs. " They have received so much favour from 
your Majesty, that they would rather have the help of 
Spaniards." Dr. Allen and his followers therefore 
stood aloof somewhat now from the Guise proposals, 
and " convinced that they must look for a remedy only 
to the feeling of England, they have made up their 
minds that they are simply wasting time in depending 
upon what is arranged here in France, and they have 
decided to lay the real condition of England before 
your Majesty, and beg you to extend your pity to the 
poor, afflicted, distressed Catholics there." 

Tassis was much impressed by Dr. Allen's 
earnestness. Scotland was in no condition, he said, 
to co-operate at present, even if it were advisable for 
her to do so, which the English thought it was not. 
The King was a mere boy, notably unstable and in the 
hands of heretics, though he pretended to be secretly 
favourable to Guise's plans ; and the Catholics of the 
North of England were ready to rise on their own 
account if Philip would aid them with money and a few 
troops to be landed in Yorkshire or Lancashire. 
" They are so confident of success, with the blessing 
of God, in whose service the attempt will be made, 
that it is impossible for any one to hear them without 
being convinced." In this scheme the exiled Earl of 
Westmorland and Lord Dacre were to join, and 
Dr. Allen was to accompany the expedition as Bishop 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



THE PROPOSAL OF THE PRIESTS 405 

of Durham. The time fixed by Allen and his friends 
for the attempt was in September or October of that 
year, 1583, in the hope that Philip's fleet would by 
that time have defeated Don Antonio's expedition 
off the Azores, and be free to co-operate with an 
Engrlish Catholic risino^. Even an extreme Catholic 
party in Scotland were desirous of working inde- 
pendently of France and the Guises, and sent Lord 
Seton's brother to Spain to appeal to Philip, avoiding 
all communication with Guise and Beton, 

The Duke of Guise, determined not to lose hold 
of the business if he could help it, tried to graft a 
plan of his own upon that of the English Catholics, 
who were in such dead earnest and had no object 
in view but the conversion of England. He was 
willing to abate his demands considerably, and Tassis 
thought that if he were flattered enough he would 
agree to whatever Philip ordered. Guise eventually 
managed to upset the businesslike plans of Dr. Allen 
and his friends by forcing upon them his undesired 
and impractical co-operation. Father Parsons, who 
had recently returned from Spain, was to go to 
Madrid (July, 1583) to represent to Philip the English 
view of the case and to crave Spanish support ; but 
before he left Paris in August, Guise managed 
to enlist him as an advocate of his new combined 
plan, which he was to submit, not to Philip, but to 
the Pope. Parsons travelled under the name of 
Melino — one of his many aliases — and was instructed 
by Guise to say that if Philip would send 4,000 good 
soldiers and contribute money to raise and pay 
10,000 more, with arms for 5,000 Englishmen, the 
affair could be carried through successfully. Parsons 
was to go to Rome first and earnestly beg the Pope 



4o6 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

in Guise's name to provide money liberally, and to 
leave the whole management of the affair to the 
King of Spain. Ports, he was to assure the Pope, 
had already been secured, especially that of Fouldrey, 
on the Lancashire coast, and troops could be sent 
from Flanders to join Guise's force of 6,000 men to land 
in the South of England. The whole of the North 
of England and Catholic Scotland was ready to rise, 
the nobles prepared, and even James of Scotland 
had now freed himself from the custody of the 
Ruthvens and smiled upon the enterprise. The Pope 
was to be asked to issue a Bull approving of the 
expedition, giving indulgences to all who aided it, 
and to appoint Dr. Allen Nuncio and Bishop of 
Durham. 

This was the message that Parsons, under the name 
of Melino, took to Rome ; and to any one who knows 
Philip's methods it spells failure on the face of it. 
When the King heard that Parsons had in Guise's 
name settled with the Pope what Rome's contribu- 
tion was to be, without reference to him, he expressed 
his annoyance with unwonted energy, for he had no 
intention of allowing his hands to be forced by priestly 
meddling or French interference. He had, indeed, 
by this time, as we shall see presently, gradually 
allowed himself to entertain the vast project for the 
conquest and domination of England on his own 
account, towards which he intended the Pope to con- 
tribute, not the comparative trifle demanded by Guise, 
but the lion's share of the expense. 

At the same time as Parsons went on his way to 
Rome, Guise despatched to England Charles Paget, 
who, with Thomas Morgan, had been sent by Mary 
Stuart to serve as assistants or secretaries to Beton, 



GUISE AGAIN INTERFERES 407 

his mission being" to ascertain from the Enoflish 
Catholics what force they could join to Guise's inva- 
ding army. Paget, although an Englishman, was 
ostensibly a devout Guisan, but in strong opposi- 
tion to the interference of Parsons and the Jesuits in 
political affairs. I From the first he had been a spy 
in Walsingham's pay, and to him was owing the 
perfect knowledge possessed by Elizabeth's Govern- 
ment of the whole of the present intrigue. The 
instructions given to him by Guise display more 
clearly than any other document the utter incompati- 
bility of the viev/s respectively of Philip and Guise 
with regard to England, and of themselves are 
sufficient to account for the subsequent exclusion of 
Guise from all the Spanish plans relating to it. 
Paget is instructed to discover which port will be 
most convenient for Guise's landing, and what 
strength will join him there. Guise would come with 
4,000 or 6,000 men, and desired a port within fifty 
leagues of Dover. He wished to know what pro- 

^ Parsons, although always an enemy of Paget, was, up to 
the period in question, as we have seen, an adherent of Guise 
and the Scottish plans ; but he appears to have changed 
immediately after his return from Rome. Allen, who was older 
and more experienced, probably indoctrinated him with the 
Anglo-Spanish view. Tassis, writing on the 15th November, 
1583, says that Parsons " persists that upon no account should 
the enterprise he commenced in Scotland. He is strongly of 
opinion that the design upon England should be persevered in 
and the heart struck at first : and he says that Allen is told this, 
by persons on the Border itself, who prove it by irrefutable 
arguments." Amongst these arguments is one that was con- 
stantly used afterwards, viz., that no matter what the nationality 
of the foreign troops, if they came to England via Scotland, 
they would be looked upon as French and opposed accord- 
ingly. — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



4o8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

visions and arms would be ready for him, and much 
other information was sought. To all of this Philip 
scattered on the margin when he read the dispatch 
satirical exclamations at the unreadiness and uncer- 
tainty that these inquiries demonstrated ; but what 
finally convinced Philip that Guise was no fit con- 
federate for him was the concluding portion of Paget's 
instructions. " Assure the English Catholics, on the 
faith and honour of Hercules [z.e.y Guise], that the 
enterprise is being undertaken with no other object 
or intention than to re-establish the Catholic religion 
in England, and to place the Queen of Scotland 
peacefully on the English throne, which of right 
belongs to her. When this is effected the foreigners 
will immediately retire from the country, and if any- 
one attempts to frustrate this intention, Hercules 
[Guise] promises that he and his forces will join 
the people of the country to compel the foreigners 
to withdraw." ^ No wonder that Philip underscored 
these lines, and that he thenceforward found the whole 
plan insufficiently matured. Once more he primly 
deprecated undue haste, and gently put the plan 
aside with vague professions of sympathy. 

Mendoza in England was less cautious than his 
master. His position, as we have seen, was a 
humiliating one, as Elizabeth persisted in her re- 
fusal to receive him as ambassador, and he was 
exposed to daily slights from those who took their 
tone from the Queen. When Charles Paget went 
to England on Guise's errand in August-September, 
1583, he was directed to Francis Throckmorton for 
the purpose of obtaining the information he sought ; 
this man being probably the person referred to in 
' Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. (Paris Archives Nationales). 



ARREST OF THROCKMORTON 409 

the correspondence already quoted, as having been 
willing to kill Elizabeth a few months previously at 
Guise's bidding. However that may be, Throck- 
morton was an intimate of Mendoza, who had been 
informed of all that had been discussed in Paris, and 
both he and Charles Paget, whilst he was in Eng- 
land, were closely watched. Through his numerous 
spies Walsingham was perfectly aware of all that 
had been so incautiously handled by Guise ; the 
whole of the invasion project had been known to 
Elizabeth's Government for months, and though 
Charles Paget, who was a spy, was allowed to get 
clear away to France, no sooner was he gone than 
the blow fell upon those in England with whom 
he had conferred. 

Francis Throckmorton was arrested, as was the 
new Earl of Northumberland and his son, whilst the 
Earl of Arundel was summoned before the Privy 
Council, and Lord Paget and Charles Arundell (of 
Wardour) fled to France. Mendoza was deeply con- 
cerned at the arrest of his friend Throckmorton, and 
wrote to Philip a-n account of it, cautiously worded, 
but sufficiently inculpatory: "The Catholics are quite 
cowed. . . . Only one paper was found upon Throck- 
morton, containing a list of the principal ports in 
England, and particulars with regard to them, and 
the chief gentlemen and Catholics resident in them. 
For this they carried him at once to the Tower, and 
it is feared that his life is in danger, although he 
informed me by a cipher note, written on a playing- 
card and thrown out of the window, that he denies 
that the document is in his handwriting, the hand 
being a disguised one. He told them that some 
person had thrown it into his house for the purpose 



4IO TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

of injuring him, and he assures me that he will 
endure a thousand deaths rather than accuse any one, 
which message he begs me to convey to his Catholic 
friends. ... I have written to the lady in prison [i.e., 
Mary Stuart], encouraging her, and begging her not 
to grieve over the matter to the detriment of her 
health, but the business, it may be feared, may im- 
peril her life if the negotiations in France are 
entirely discovered." ^ 

Tassis in Paris was even more despondent, and 
he feared, what proved to be true, that the rack would 
soon draw from the prisoner all he knew. Time 
after time Throckmorton was tormented, as were 
his brother-in-law and two other relatives, and 
sufficient was torn from them, together with the known 
correspondence, to furnish a good pretext at last 
for expelling Mendoza from England with ignominy. 
On the 19th January, 1584, a formal summons for 
him to appear before the Council was handed to 
him. "If these gentlemen wish to see me in 
my private capacity," he replied to Beal, the Secre- 
tary, "let them come to my house as I went to 
theirs when I wanted to see them. But if they are 
sitting in Council, I would wait upon them, as an 
ambassador should; but I warn them that if I open 
my ears to what they have to say, I shall not shut 
my mouth to answer them, as the service of my 
master may demand." He says he gave this answer 
because he knew the intention was to expel him, 
and on the Councillors answering that they wished 
to see him officially, he went to the Lord Chan- 
cellor's house to meet them. 

Walsingham spoke Italian better than the rest, 
' Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



EXPULSION OF MENDOZA 411 

and formulated the Queen's complaint. Mendoza, 
he said, had conspired with Guise to liberate the 
Queen of Scots ; he was known to be in communi- 
cation with Mary, with the French plotters, and 
with Throckmorton, and he must leave the country 
within fifteen days. "It is strange," sneered 
Mendoza, " that the Queen should have summoned 
them and himself for such a trifle as this. What 
you tell me are mere dreams, hardly worthy of an 
answer. These general accusations are absurd, 
mainly extorted by the rack, and unsupported by 
details." Very different were the charges he brought 
against the Queen of trying to injure his master, 
King Philip : and he launched out his usual string 
of complaints, from the seizure of the Spanish treasure 
fifteen years before to the present helping of Don 
Antonio against his rightful sovereign. As for his 
leaving England, that, as his hearers well knew, 
would delight him, and he would go the moment 
his master instructed him to do so in answer to a 
despatch sent by the Queen requesting his recall. 
The Councillors rose angrily at this and said that 
nothing of the sort would be done : he must leave 
England at once : ** and they explained their past 
acts with impertinences that I dare not repeat to your 
Majesty, the least of them being that I ought to 
be very thankful that the Queen had not ordered 
me to be punished for what I had done." 

The blood of the proud Mendozas, the noblest 
family in Spain, flared out at this : " To my King 
alone in the world belongs the right of correcting 
me, and to him alone under heaven am I responsible : 
so, say no more on that point, unless ye are pre- 
pared to fight." As for the Queen of England 



412 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

punishing him, he laughed at the idea. He would 
be overjoyed to be gone as soon as a passport was 
sent to him. She was a lady, and, as such, the 
least grateful to those v/ho served her best ; but, 
as he had failed to satisfy her as a minister of peace 
she would in future force him to try whether he 
would succeed better as a minister of war. Thus 
Mendoza flung down the gage to England and the 
Reformation. He had been unpopular in London 
before, but now the rumour spread through England 
that he had plotted to kill the Queen, and his 
life was in the greatest danger from the popular 
indignation against him. He himself, seeing that 
the Government refused him the aid of English ships 
to get away, and the Dutch privateers still swarmed 
in the narrow seas, was convinced that mischief was 
meant to him. But he held his head high and 
boasted more than ever, as slight followed slight 
from Elizabeth's ministers, of the overwhelming 
greatness and power of his master. King Philip, who 
would avenge with interest all the injuries inflicted 
upon him and Spain. *' Don Bernardino de Men- 
doza was not born to disturb countries, but to con- 
quer them," he said in one of his messages to 
Elizabeth ; whilst to Philip himself he passionately 
wrote with a back-handed reproach : " All their 
behaviour is on a par with this ; and if God had 
not made you so clement and God-fearing a prince, 
surely no vassal of yours would consent to serve 
you in England, seeing the way in which the English 
treat us : for so powerful an empire as that which 
God has granted to your Majesty cannot endure such 
ill-treatment as this for any earthly reward." ^ 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



ELIZABETH'S DEADLY ENEMY 413 

To add to his trouble, he was almost without money, 
for Philip was the worst paymaster in the world, and 
he had to bring away with him from England, not only 
his own great household but the English spies and 
intermediaries who had served him. " The insolence 
of these people [i.e., Elizabeth's Government] has 
brought me to a state, in which my only desire to 
live is for the purpose of revenging myself upon 
them ; and I pray that God may let it be soon, and 
will give me grace to be His instrument of wrath, 
even though I have to walk barefoot across the world 
to beg for it. I am sure his Majesty will give such 
an answer as their insolence merits." ^ 

And so, cursing and reviled, the proud ambassador, 
with rage in his heart, was hustled out of England, 
and once more King Philip was face to face with the 
apparently unsolvable problem of how to gain control 
of English policy. Five ministers of his had begun 
hopefully with methods of suave diplomacy, and one 
after the other had become dangerous conspirators 
and promoters of treason. Elizabeth and her Govern- 
ment, timidly at first and with many gyrations, had 
through a long series of years injured with impunity 
the dearest interests of Spain. The seizure of the 
treasure had caused the failure of Alba ; the constant 
aid of the Netherlands revolt had prevented the 
pacification of Flanders ; the sheltering of the pirates 
and privateers in English ports had almost cut off com- 
munication between Spain and the Flemish dominions 
by sea ; the depredations of Drake, afloat and ashore, 
had well-nigh ruined Spain and demonstrated her 
impotence to the world ; whilst the assistance and 
asylum given to the Portuguese Pretender had rendered 
^ To Idiaquez. — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



414 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

incomplete Philip's hold over the new conquest upon 
which he based such great hopes. 

For five-and-twenty years Philip, against the 
impatient advice of many of his ministers, had 
persisted in the belief that his own slow, cautious, 
diplomatic methods would succeed in conciliating 
Elizabeth or in substituting for her an instrument 
more amenable to his hand. The expulsion of 
Mendoza, in January, 1584, marks the conclusion of 
the era of peaceful effort. The ambassador left 
England breathing threats of war and vengeance, 
and when Philip received the reports of his doings 
he had no words but those of praise and approbation 
for them. "You have acted with the same good 
sense and courage in the manner of your departure 
as in all else that has happened during your stay 
in the country. I am entirely satisfied with you, and 
with your good services, and will take care that they 
are duly remembered." 

Philip at last had made up his mind : henceforward 
it must be war to the knife between himself and 
Elizabeth, and no keener instrument to work the 
destruction of his enemy could be found than 
Mendoza, with a bitter personal injury of his own 
to avenge. From his new post in Paris the 
ambassador worked incessantly to compass the ruin 
of the regime in England that had wounded his 
pride ; and for the rest of his active life, until, blind 
and heartbroken with failure, the brilliant soldier, 
diplomatist, and historian was shrouded in a monk's 
gabardine, Elizabeth had no enemy so indefatigable 
and rancorous as Don Bernardino de Mendoza. Plans 
and plots for revolution in England, for the murder 
of Elizabeth, and for the overthrow by treachery of 



PHILIP CONVINCED AT LAST 415 

the Protestant power in favour of Mary Stuart, were 
the means upon which Mendoza mainly depended. 

Philip was willing, in his cool, cautious way, to 
smile upon such attempts, when he could do so 
without committing himself prematurely or too far. 
They might turn out well by chance, and he might 
reap the harvest where others had sown the grain 
and nourished it with their blood. But through it all 
thenceforward there was slowly maturing in Philip's 
mind, and preparing in his chancelleries, the great 
enterprise to which he had been forced by the logic 
of events — the conquest and domination of England 
by his own arms and for his own benefit. Such a 
scheme necessitated patient plotting in every capital 
in Europe before the material preparations could be 
even commenced. Of the secret preliminaries, the 
laborious concentration, and the final disaster of the 
great Armada in which Philip's ambitions were 
wrecked the next chapter will tell. 



b '■■ 



CHAPTER IX 
1584-1588 

English Catholics versus Scottish — Santa Cruz's proposal to conquer 
England — Enlisting the Pope — Intrigues in Rome — Mary Stuart and 
Philip — Drake's raid on Galicia — Elizabeth assumes the protectorate 
of the Netherlands — War at last inevitable — The preliminaries of the 
Armada — The Babington plot — Philip's consent — His distrust — Dis- 
covery — Elizabeth's fears of war — Her approaches to Spain — Santa 
Cruz's fresh proposals to invade England — His great plan — The Scot- 
tish Catholics try again to share the attack upon England — Failure of 
Huntly's scheme — Guise not allowed by Philip to interfere — Mendoza 
in favour of the Scottish plan — Philip's claims to the English crown — 
The peace negotiations — Drake's dash upon Cadiz — Parma and the 
Armada — Death of Santa Cruz — Medina Sidonia — The Armada — The 
failure and its causes — The end of the struggle to win England 

WHEN the news came of the arrest of 
Francis Throckmorton and his friends, 
and the expulsion of Mendoza, in January, 
1584, Allen and Parsons were at Tournay busily 
discussing and arranging with Alexander Farnese, 
Philip's viceroy in Flanders, the details of the 
proposed invasion of England in conjunction with 
Guise and a rising of English Catholics. At first the 
English priests affected to believe that the arrests 
would have no serious effects upon their plans. "If," 
they wrote to Philip, " these men had been cast into 
prison in consequence of our great business, they 
would, as usual, have been put into the Tower of 
London ; and we feel sure, therefore, that up to the 
present our adversaries have not discovered any par- 
ticulars of our plans." ^ On the contrary, they con- 
* Roman Transcript, Record OfEce, vol. xvii. Allen and 

Parsons to the Pope and Philip, i6th January, 1584. 

416 



ANOTHER FAILURE 417 

tinue, what has happened should only have the effect 
of encouraging his Majesty to carry the matter 
through with greater celerity. "It is nothing short 
of a miracle that a business known to so many friends 
for two years past should have remained undiscovered 
so long ; but it cannot remain hidden much longer, so 
that unless aid comes from abroad at once the Catho- 
lics in the island will be utterly ruined. We there- 
fore cast ourselves at the feet of his Majesty, and cry 
unto him for the love of Jesus Christ that he will not 
abandon so many suffering souls, who with their 
hands raised to heaven are looking eagerly for his 
help. The time is favourable, and every day's delay 
is filled with danger." 

Alas ! the zealous Churchmen, who were still at 
this time acting in concert with the Duke of Guise, 
did not even yet understand the character and aims 
of Philip. The King, keener sighted than the priests, 
knew full well that the arrest of the English Catho- 
lics and the expulsion of Mendoza meant not only 
the failure of the loosely-knit plan of invasion with 
Scottish-Guisan co-operation, but a remodelling of the 
whole scheme for subduing England to his will. He 
faced the new problem cautiously and speciously, as 
was his wont, for he could not afford to alienate the 
Papacy by avowing political ends, nor dared he at 
first openly to fly in the face of Guise. Mendoza was 
summoned to Spain to confer with his master, for Men- 
doza was always haughtily oblivious to any but purely 
Spanish means and ends, and to him was confided 
the entire direction of the English enterprise from the 
Spanish embassy in Paris, to which he was appointed. 
But ere he arrived at his post the English Jesuits, 
recognising, at last, that the Scottish-Guisan plan 



4i8 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

was really frustrated, had trimmed their sails in the 
direction most likely to attain the ends they aimed 
at — namely, that which would best please their 
Spanish paymaster. 

The Vatican, always jealous of Spanish over- 
reaching, still clung to the inclusion of Guise and 
the attack upon England across the Scottish border ;i 
and Beton and other Scottish Catholics naturally 
followed a lead which offered such prospects for the 
aggrandisement of their country. But Allen and 
Parsons were already undeceived, for they had been 
in close touch with Spanish feeling in Flanders ; and 
when the former was summoned to Paris by Beton 
and Guise in April, 1584, in order that they might 
convince him that the Scottish plan was the best, 
they came to high words, and Allen penned a vigorous 
defence of his own and the Spanish view. The Eng- 
lish Catholics, he said, would never rise and join a 
force coming from Scotland, owing to the hatred and 
jealousy between the peoples ; the King of Scots' 
religion being more than doubtful, moreover, will 
make people believe that he is trying to conquer 
England for himself rather than for the Church, and 
the very Catholics will fight against him and his 
foreign Catholic allies. A landing in Scotland also, 
said Allen, would give Elizabeth and her Government 
time to prepare and mass their forces on the Border, 
whilst a descent on the Welsh or northern English 
coasts would find the people ready to welcome their 
deliverers and secure their footing before the Queen 
could organise resistance. ^ 

^ The Cardinal of Como to the Nuncio in Paris, 9th April, 
1584. — Roman Transcripts, Record Office. 

2 Allen to the Nuncio in Paris. — "Letters and Memorials of 
Cardinal Allen." 



ENGLISH VERSUS SCOTS 419 

Before he surrendered his post to his successor, 
Mendoza, Tassis, the outgoing Spanish ambassador 
in Paris, also wrote a weighty memorandum to Philip 
enforcing the same view, whilst recommending him 
to send money to the King of Scots to keep him in 
hand ; ^ and thus not many weeks passed from the 
failure of the combined Guisan and Jesuit plan before 
the English Jesuit and Spanish elements perfectly 
understood each other, and agreed that Spain must 
act alone in England. In May, 1584, Tassis wrote 
to Philip that Allen and Parsons were both in Paris : 
'' Still of opinion that the enterprise should be 
directed against England itself, and on no account- 
should it be attempted elsewhere. . . . Scotsmen 
here, impatient at the delay, are discussing the possi- 
bility of carrying through the business by other aid 
than that of your Majesty ; and, although Allen and 
Parsons are trying to keep in with them as much 
as possible, they [i.e., Allen and Parsons] say that 
the English need no other patron than your Majesty, 
and they not only look to you for a remedy, but they 
say that even if you make the Queen of Scotland 
their Sovereign they hope you will not leave them 
hastily, or until everything is settled permanently. 
They also say they would be glad for your Majesty to 
keep some [English] ports in your hands, the better 
to assure matters." 2 This was the thin end of the 
wedge ; and, knowingly or not, the ideas of Allen 
and Parsons must even thus early have agreed with 
Philip's humour at the time. 

James Stuart, by his tergiversation, had made 
himself quite impossible, from Philip's point of view, 

* Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 

« Tassis to Philip, May 27th. — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



420 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

as a successor to his mother on the throne of Catholic 
England. Philip's own descent from John of Gaunt 
was undoubted, and already had been quietly men- 
tioned as giving him a claim to succeed to the Crown 
in default of other Catholic heirs. If England had 
to be conquered by sheer force and by Spanish arms, 
Philip was determined to make a complete job of it, 
and to suffer no more backsliding such as had happened 
after the death of his wife Mary ; so that the sugges- 
tion of the Jesuits that the attack should be a frontal 
one on England itself, and that the Spaniards should 
retain their hold upon the country even after Mary 
Stuart had been substituted for Elizabeth, met a 
ready but cautious echo from the King himself. 

Some months before this, when, in August, 1583, 
the Marquis of Santa Cruz, the great Alvaro de 
Bazan, had scattered off the Azores the mercenary 
French and English fleet in the service of the unfor- 
tunate Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio, and the 
Spanish squadrons, flushed with victory, were ready 
for more fighting, the famous admiral wrote in exalted 
strains to the King, praying for his permission to 
make him King of England. *' Your Majesty," he 
wrote, "is now so well prepared, and with an army 
so victorious, that I supplicate you not to miss this 
chance ; for believe me, sire, I have the will to make 
you King of England and of other realms as well, 
whence you might with confidence hope to subdue 
Flanders." Philip was hardly ready for the step yet ; 
for he had the hard task before him of hoodwinking 
the Vatican as well as parrying French opposition 
and Guisan interference, but he wrote to his great 
admiral : "These are things of which we can hardly 
speak just yet, for they must depend upon time and 



INTRIGUES IN ROME 421 

circumstances ; but in any case I will order the pre- 
parations you propose to be made, biscuits to be 
provided, the building of galleons hastened, and men 
sent to Flanders to be ready." ^ 

The first necessary step was to secure the financial 
support of the Pope without letting him know the 
real object of the proposed invasion. Gregory XIII. 
was cautious and unambitious, though not unwilling 
to signalise his pontificate by some great effort against 
heresy, but, like most Italians, with no desire to 
aggrandise Spain politically. He was surrounded by 
Cardinals representing different interests : Medici, 
D'Este, Gonzaga, Rusticucci, Santorio, and others 
favouring the French view, which looked with hope 
towards the conversion of James Stuart and an 
arrangement with Elizabeth to recognise him as her 
heir, the real object being, of course, the exclusion 
of Spanish influence from England. Cardinal Sanzio 
watched the interests of the House of Guise, while the 
Secretary of State, Caraffa, Sirleto, Como, Dr. Allen 
(somewhat later), and the Spanish ambassador, the 
Count of Olivares, worked craftily and incessantly to 
forward Philip's wishes. It will be recollected that 
when Father Parsons, under the name of Melino, 
went to Rome at the instance of Guise in the autumn 
of 1583, to beg the Pope's assistance in money for the 
combined Anglo-Scottish project, Gregory XIII. had 
readily promised what was asked of him, much to 
Philip's annoyance. When, therefore, Olivares, in 
Philip's name in the spring of the following year, 
1584, sounded the Pope upon the much vaster pro- 
ject of invading England with a great force direct, 

^ Bazan to the King and the reply, Fernandez Duro, " La 
Armada Invincible." 



422 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

the Pontiff blandly replied that he would contribute 
what he had promised to Guise through Parsons, and 
at the same time recommended to Philip the Guisan 
plan of an invasion of Scotland as a preliminary of 
the conquest of England for the faith. 

It was not so easy, replied Philip, to liberate the 
King of Scotland, nor was it safe for the Duke of 
Guise to stir from his house in France unless in great 
force. If he were to try the Scottish plan he would 
probably be lost, which would be an irreparable blow 
to the Catholic cause in France. Then Philip gently 
pushed James Stuart into the background. He shall 
be helped with money, of course, and the English 
Catholics shall be kept in good heart, but the affair 
is a great one, and will take time and much money 
if it is to be done with a certainty of success ; above 
all, the Pope must " contribute very largely, and must 
find ways and means, through his holy zeal, to do 
much more than any one has yet imagined." ^ 

The stars seemed to favour the Spanish plan. 
Young Alencon died in June, 1584, and the next heir 
to the Crown of France was the Huguenot Henry of 
Navarre. Guise, with his high hopes and the people 
of Paris at his bidding, was thenceforward more easily 
brought into obedience to Philip ; for upon Spanish 
forces alone could he depend to aid the French 
Catholics to resist the accession of a Protestant 
sovereign. Civil war, indeed, loomed up in France, 
and from it the Duke of Guise might hope to emerge 
a king ; and in December, 1584, the Catholic league 
of Philip and Guise was signed at Joinville, by which 
the King of Spain was left a free hand in English 
affairs in return for his support of Guise in the rapidly 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



MARY STUART IMPATIENT 423 

approaching struggle in France. Philip was thus 
assured, first, that the Huguenots would be too busy 
to help Elizabeth in her hour of need, and, secondly, 
that Guise would be too full of his own ambitions in 
France to interfere with his in England. 

The death of Gregory XIII. and the accession of 
Felice Peretti as Pope Sixtus V. also seemed to favour 
the Spanish objects. Sixtus was full of vast pro- 
jects for the spread of orthodox Christianity ; he was 
a man of great ability and boundless ambition, who 
had waited long for his chance and was determined 
to make the most of it now it had come, so that 
Olivares had in future a more ready listener than 
before to his exhortations on behalf of the Catholic 
King. But though Sixtus yearned to do great things 
for the Church, he was determined, as his predecessor 
had been, not to work for purely Spanish aims to the 
prejudice of France ; and for the next two years a 
keen war of wits was waged between Olivares and 
the Pope, the Spaniard seeking to obtain the million 
ducats subsidy to the English enterprise without 
pledging his master to any definite course in Eng- 
land after the conquest. 

In the meanwhile the long delay was driving 
Mary Stuart and the English Catholics to despera- 
tion. The Queen had been taken from the mild 
custody of Lord Shrewsbury, and was now kept a 
close prisoner in the hands of very different gaolers. 
Her one hope was in Philip and Mendoza ; but as 
month followed month whilst her treatment became 
harsher and no succour came — for the vast plans 
of Philip could only be carried out, if at all, with 
infinite preliminaries — the unhappy woman became 
almost vehement in her prayers that the move- 



424 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

ment should be made before it was too late. In 
November, 1584, she wrote to Mendoza : "Let the 
end be what it may, and whatever becomes of me, no 
matter what change may be made in my condition, 
pray use all diligence in forwarding the execution 
of the great enterprise without any regard for the 
personal danger I may incur. I shall look upon 
my life as well spent if by its sacrifice I can help 
to relieve the multitude of oppressed children of 
the Holy Catholic Church." Both she and Mendoza 
believed at this time that her life was in danger 
unless the Spanish attack was delivered in time to 
avert the supposed evil intention, and the ambassa- 
dor, writing to Philip, added his own supplications 
to those of the Queen that no more time should be 
lost. 

What Mendoza dreaded even more than Mary's 
murder by the English, was the possibility of her 
escape by their means, as she would then owe her 
life to heretics, and would thereafter presumably be 
an untrustworthy instrument against them. " If, on 
the contrary, she perish, as may be feared, it cannot 
fail to bring scandal and reproach upon your Majesty, 
because as you are, after her, the nearest Catholic 
heir of the blood royal of England, some false 
suspicion might be aroused at your having abandoned 
the good Queen to be ruined by the heretics, in 
order to open the door to your Majesty's own 
advantage." ^ This idea of Philip's claim to the 
English succession was industriously kept alive by 
Allen, Parsons, and Hugh Owen, who had been 
appointed a committee to advise the Duke of Parma 
in Flanders with regard to the English enterprise, 
* Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



THE GREAT SCHEME GROWS 425 

until the breaking out of the civil war in France, 
and the open support given to the Dutch rebels 
and Huguenots by Elizabeth, changed the centre 
of intrigue from Flanders to Rome ; and Allen and 
Parsons were sent thither to work in favour of the 
Spanish plans. 

For the scheme was surely growing now into a 
vast expedition, ostensibly to place Mary Stuart 
upon the throne of England, but really to make 
Philip master of the country, with or without the 
nominal sovereignty. Deeply though France was 
plunged in civil war, with Guise in arms tyrannising 
over the King, the French interest was still strong, 
and, both at Rome and elsewhere, would struggle 
its hardest against anything like a Spanish domina- 
tion of England. Nor were the Italians in love 
with the idea of a conquest that would make Philip 
supreme in Europe, and consequently all the skill, 
boldness, and cunning of Spanish diplomacy was 
concentrated in Rome to obtain by false pretences 
from the Church the vast sums required for the 
conquest of England. With the weak attempts of 
the French Government itself to avert the danofer 
Philip could easily deal. The French ministers 
proposed to Mendoza in June, 1585, that Spain and 
France jointly should invade England in favour of 
Mary Stuart. Philip understood the object at once, 
and in his usual way, with much sanctimonious 
verbiage, asked for a multitude of pledges and 
particulars, as if he entertained the proposal, whilst 
he continued his own stealthy preliminaries in Rome 
for the purely Spanish enterprise, for which others 
might pay but he alone must direct.^ When the 

"■ Philip to Mendoza, 5th July, 1585.— Spanish Calendar, 
vol. iii. 



426 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

leader of the French party in the Vatican, Cardinal 
D'Este, soon after this tried to persuade the Pope 
that the best and safest course for the Church 
would be to aid Guise to direct the English enter- 
prise and make James Stuart King of Britain after 
his mother's death, another line had to be taken 
by Philip. Then Olivares boldly told the Pope that 
D'Este, like so many of his house, was a bad 
Catholic, who sought to bring about the victory of 
heresy in France and the consequent downfall of the 
Guises. Let the Pope secure the triumph of Guise 
and the faith in France first, urged Olivares, and 
the English enterprise could be undertaken after- 
wards. 

Sixtus V. was willing, nay anxious, to allow the 
conquest to be undertaken by Spain alone, recognising 
that the French Catholics could not now safely be 
allowed to exhaust their strength in a foreign war; 
but he always hoped that James's constant assurances 
of Catholic sympathies might be sincere, and that 
Mary Stuart might be duly succeeded by her son 
under Catholic auspices. Guise also was constantly 
plied with arguments by Mendoza on Philip's orders, 
directed to divert him from all ideas of England. 
"Warn him [Guise] against making any agreement 
with his enemies," wrote Philip, on the 17th August, 
1585, "and open his eyes with regard to the English 
enterprise. Point out to him the danger he runs 
if he allows himself to be cajoled into leaving his 
home and country before he has humbled his rivals 
and converted or expelled the heretics, and how^ 
much deceived he might find himself when he wished 
to return to France from such an attempt. . , . Tell 
the French first to put an end to the heretics in 



ENGLAND'S RETALIATION 427 

their own country, and afterwards we can deal with 
them elsewhere." ^ 

The sinister activity of Philip's agents in Rome 
and the vapouring of the English Catholic refugees 
in Spanish Flanders, had in the meanwhile aroused 
the distrust of Elizabeth and her Government. Ever 
since Philip had captured Portugal and obtained 
thus the command of the Atlantic, the Puritan 
element in the English Court, led by Leicester and 
Walsingham, had promoted attempts, through Don 
Antonio and otherwise, to strike a crushing blow 
at the Spanish naval power in Europe. Drake's 
depredations in the Pacific had been a terrible 
loss to Spain, both in a moral and material sense, 
and the English seamen were eag-er to return to 
the charge, in order to anticipate and frustrate the 
evil which most of them believed was being plotted 
against their country by the quiet, stealthy little 
elderly man far away in the mountains of Castile. 
Elizabeth and Cecil detested to face responsibility ; 
and although the Queen was willing to accept the 
benefit of accomplished facts, she usually set her face 
against assuming an attitude of open hostility to 
Spain when she could avoid it. Leicester had at 
last, in the autumn of 1585, induced her to accept, 
with much misgiving, the practical protection of the 
rebel Dutch States, and this was naturally assumed 
by Philip as an act of open war. Thenceforward 
any means for injuring the English were considered 
legitimate by the King of Spain. 

In the spring of 1585 a large number of English 
ships had been induced, on a promise of immunity 
from molestation, to carry cargoes of grain to the 

* Philip to Mendoza, 17th August. — Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



428 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

northern ports of Spain, where famine was impending. 
One of these ships, the Primrose, was discharging 
her cargo off Portugalete, near Bilbao, when, as 
the EngHsh sailors averred, the Lieutenant-Governor 
of Biscay and a force of men disguised as mer- 
chants boarded the ship and suddenly called upon 
the Englishmen to surrender. Though taken by 
surprise, the crew turned upon the intruders and 
threw them all overboard, though some were sub- 
sequently rescued by the English, amongst them the 
Lieutenant-Governor himself ; whereupon the Prim- 
rose, carrying her prisoners with her, immediately 
set sail to England, with the news of the treachery, 
the official orders found upon the person of the 
half-drowned Lieutenant-Governor being to the effect 
that the ships were all to be captured to help the 
expedition contemplated for the invasion of England. 
At all events, the rest of the English ships were 
captured, Philip's own pretext for the act being 
that it was in reprisal for the daring abduction by 
the Primrose of the Lieutenant-Governor.^ 

No sooner did the news reach England than the 
country burst into a chorus of indignation, and the 
sailors and Puritans, who had so long urged an 
active policy against Spain on the sea, found that | 
all Englishmen were now with them.^ It was no 

^ Philip to Mendoza, 23rd July, 1585. — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. iii. ,1 

2 It appears, from a letter written by the Marquis of Santa 
Cruz in 1586, that all the English ships were released in a 
week or so without any damage being done to them, whereas 
the embargo upon Spanish property in England was not raised 
at all. Santa Cruz represents that the English were the ag- | 
gressors ; probably some religious point was made the pretext 
for the attempt to take possession of the Primrose by the 



DRAKE THE AVENGER 429 

longer to be a timid support of the Portuguese 
Pretender, or a surreptitious sheltering of Dutch and 
Huguenot privateers, but an avowed public movement, 
and London and the western ports of England came 
openly with subscriptions, to which the Queen con- 
tributed largely, for a joint-stock fleet under Drake, 
to avenge the capture of English ships, and to injure 
Spanish shipping wherever it could be found. This 
was open war ; and through the summer and autumn 
of 1585 Philip's spies in England continued to send 
him alarming news of the great preparations for a 
naval expedition against him under the dreaded 
Drake. Sometimes it was said to be another attempt 
to place Don Antonio on the Portuguese throne, 
sometimes it was the Spanish silver fleet that was 
to be met and plundered on its way home, and so 
forth ; but whatever it was it boded ill to Philip's 
ships, with Drake in command of his foes. Retalia- 
tory embargoes were placed once more on Spanish 
property in England, and the two countries thence- 
forward were practically at war. 

The enthusiasm in England knew no bounds ; 
and when Drake and his sea-dogs Fenner, Wynter, 
and Frobisher sailed out of Plymouth with twenty- 
one stout craft and many pinnaces well armed, on 
the 14th September, 1585, every one in England 
knew that Philip's secret plotting was to be met 
by open action. Capturing the Spanish ships, they 
met, Drake and his company in a few days, came 
to anchor off" the Bayona Isles in Galicia, and landed 
a force of men. " What want ye here," asked the 

Lieutenant-Governor of Biscay. The Spaniards insist that none 
of the ships were embargoed until the Primrose had sailed 
away with her " captors." 



430 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

terrified townsmen, far from succour. " We come," 
said Drake, " for the Englishmen ye have in your 
prisons, and for the EngHsh merchandise ye have 
stolen." The people could only give them fair words 
and presents of country produce, for the English 
ships had not been captured there. Burning a chapel 
and its contents, the English force then sailed to 
the great harbour of Vigo, where they looted all 
they could lay their hands upon. Here again the 
people came to parley, and Frobisher, who spoke 
good Spanish, was the spokesman of the English. 
" We want our countrymen and our stolen goods 
restored to us," he said ; and the Spaniards were 
ready to promise this or anything if the valuables 
just seized by the English were returned. Banquets 
and palavers followed, but they were full of distrust, 
and nothing came of them ; for Drake saw that his 
enemies were but delaying until help should arrive. 
So, capturing all he could catch in Vigo Bay, he sailed 
away on his West India voyage, intending to assail the 
Spanish colonial power in its three principal western 
centres. Philip was astounded at the boldness of 
the attack, the first upon Spanish soil itself, not, 
as he was careful to explain, because of the material 
damage suffered, which was small, but for the 
"insolence" of the thing; but withal, it took six 
months of frenzied effort before Alvaro de Bazan 
could muster a Spanish fleet fit to pursue the bold 
Devonshire sailor, who was devastating the West 
Indies. 

The departure of Leicester and a strong English 
army to Holland, at the end of 1585, finally brought. 
England and Spain nationally face to face in the 
field. We have witnessed the slow process by 



ELIZABETH AND PHILIP AT WAR 431 

which Philip and Elizabeth, both haters of war, 
had been drawn into this position. For the former 
it was vital that Enoland should be amenable to 
his direction in foreign policy, or the cause for 
which he lived was doomed, and the decadence of 
Spain as a dominant power in Europe was certain ; 
and, with his patient, inflexible belief in the fated 
triumph of his methods, he had striven through 
twenty-eight years to secure his object by peaceful 
means. He had failed, and it was to be war after 
all. Not now against a Queen whose throne was 
unstable, but against a popular sovereign and a 
nation which, since he had seen it, had been born 
to a new sense of power, a consciousness of poten- 
tial grandeur, and a determination to live its own 
life without interference from its neighbours. But 
though Philip's plans were thus changed late in the 
struggle and he saw himself faced by new forces, 
he, at least, never doubted of the result. For him 
the idea of failure, in a cause that in his eyes was 
that of God Himself, was impossible. With a limited 
mental scope, which shut out all views but one, he 
was incapable of understanding that there were two 
sides to every question, or that Elizabeth was 
actuated in her resistance to his advances by any- 
thing else than an impious desire to do evil for 
evil's sake. A small spice of imagination would 
have enabled him to see that she was fighting for 
her own and her country's life and greatness, as 
surely as he was fighting for his ; and perchance 
the knowledge might have made harmony, or at 
least neutrality, possible. But, given Philip's char- 
acter and Elizabeth's circumstances, it was inevitable, 
after the autumn of 1585, that the antagonists should 



432 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

come to close grip, and that one or the other should 
be reduced to impotence for harm. 

Philip was convinced of this at last, and with his 
leaden-footed deliberation he set about making success 
as certain as he knew how to make it. He was 
laborious, unsparing of himself and others, a man 
of great personal ability, sagacious and wise within 
his limitations ; but his ingrained distrust of other men 
— part of his father's teaching — led him to take upon 
himself the care of every detail in all his enterprises 
and deprived his officers of initiative and independ- 
ence. From his cell in the Escorial, far away and 
difficult of access from the coast, he insisted upon 
pulling the wires which controlled the smallest actions 
of his subordinates, and we shall see how in the 
crowning effort of his life these fatal characteristics 
cast a blight over the vast enterprise, upon which 
depended the fate of Christendom for centuries. 

There were many difficulties to overcome before 
the material preparations could even be commenced. 
First there was Sixtus to persuade, which was not 
an easy task. Olivares and Allen worked hard in 
Rome to convince him that Philip was moved 
solely by religious zeal, and not by a desire for 
revenge or aggrandisement, in projecting the expedi- 
tion. "I have plied him," wrote Olivares, "with 
every argument . . . but in addition to his natural 
tenacity and his buckler of precedents, I have been 
much hampered with the news of your Majesty's 
preparations which pour in from all quarters." The 
Guisan and Italian Cardinals, too, were for ever un- 
doing one day what Olivares and Allen with Caraffa 
had effected the day before. The Scottish and 
Welsh Catholic clergy in Rome, too, especially Dr. 



i 




CARDINAL ALLEN 



DIFFICULTIES IN ROME 433 

Owen Lewis, Bishop of Cassano, and even many of 
the English secular clergy, were strongly opposed to 
what they feared would mean a Spanish domination 
of the island ; and between the opposing factions and 
his disinclination to part with the vast sum of money 
demanded of him, Sixtus was not easy to bend to 
Philip's will. At length, after much friction and 
many quarrels, Olivares was obliged to be content 
with the Pope's promise of a million ducats towards 
the subjection of England ; but no persuasion or 
pressure could move Sixtus to provide any part of 
this sum until after the Spanish army had secured 
a footing on the island. A more delicate matter even 
than this was the question of the sovereignty of 
England after the death of Mary Stuart. Sixtus 
now usually agreed — though he often wavered on the 
point — that James Stuart was not to be trusted ; 
and in compliance with Philip's argument that a 
successor to Mary should be chosen before she was 
placed upon the English throne, in order to prevent 
her from forcing her son as her heir afterwards, the 
Pope was at length brought to agree to leave the 
choice of the future Sovereign of England to the King 
of Spain, though he pleaded hard that the person 
chosen should be an Englishman. ^ 

Whilst Olivares in Rome, with imperious boldness, 
was managing the Pope, Mendoza in Paris, with equal 
skill, was keeping Guise in hand, pointing out the 
great destiny that awaited him in France, and the 
shame of allowing a heretic King to succeed to 
the " most Christian " Crown. At the same time 
he maintained a close correspondence with Mary 

^ The correspondence of Olivares detailing his negotiations 
with Sixtus is in the Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 

FF 



434 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Stuart and the disaffected section of English Catholics 
who were represented as yearning for the coming 
of King Philip's liberating fleet. Mary was sore 
and angry at what she thought an unjustifiable 
delay on the part of Philip, and was incessant in 
her prayers, through Mendoza, that she should be 
liberated before it was too late. Most of her inter- 
mediaries were false, and her secret correspondence 
was known to Walsingham and Elizabeth, but with 
Mary's unhappy trustfulness she never failed to seize 
upon any chance, however dangerous, by which her 
great ambition might, perhaps, be served. 

In the middle of May, 1586, Charles Paget, who 
was still one of Mary's agents in Paris, came to 
Mendoza, bringing with him an English priest named 
Ballard, who had been sent by a number of Catholics, 
especially in Lancashire and the North, to represent 
to him that : " God had infused more courage than 
ever into them, and had convinced them that no 
time was so opportune as the present to shake off 
the oppression of the Queen and the yoke of heresy 
that weighs upon them, as most of the strongest 
heretics are now absent in Zeeland. They say that 
I have never deceived them, and they beg me to 
tell them whether your Majesty had determined 
to help them to take up arms when they decided 
to do so." ^ Mendoza had but a general expression 
of sympathy to reply to this ; for though the great 
fleet of conquest projected in Spain was already 
the talk of Europe, to Philip's officers it was still 
supposed to be an inviolate secret. This inquiry 
of the English Catholics, however, was not John 
Ballard's real reason for coming to see Mendoza. 
^ Mendoza to Philip, Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



THE BABINGTON PLOT 435 

He handed him a letter from four EngHsh Catholics 
who had access to Elizabeth's Court, in which they 
promised to kill the Queen either by poison or by 
steel if they were assured of Philip's help after the 
deed was done. Mendoza ciphered the letter himself 
and sent it to Philip's secretary, but as John Ballard 
did not broach the subject verbally Mendoza's dis- 
inclination to give any pledges kept Ballard in 
Paris beating about the bush in doubt for many 
weeks. Parsons, who was a good hater, asserted 
ten years afterwards ^ that the whole scheme of 
Ballard and Gifford was promoted by Paget and 
Morgan, Mary Stuart's correspondents in Paris, for 
the purpose of frustrating the purely Spanish attack 
upon England, to which they are represented as 
being bitterly hostile, and that Walsingham was 
informed of the plot with the same object. Paget 
was, and continued to be, a pensioner of Spain, 
and Morgan, who was entirely trusted by Mary, 
was also richly rewarded by Philip, at her request ; 
but there is no reason to doubt the positive asser- 
tions of Parsons that both of them belonged to the 
anti-Jesuit party, to which, indeed, most English as 
well as the Scottish and Welsh Catholics adhered ; 
and that by every means they endeavoured to 
frustrate what Allen and the Jesuits tried so hard 
to promote — a Spanish domination of England. 

Whilst Ballard waited in Paris the reply of 
Mendoza, the latter received important letters from 
Mary Stuart, who at last had been able, by Morgan's 
contrivance, to re-open correspondence with the outer 

^ Parsons to Idiaquez, 30th June, 1597. Transcript printed 
in " Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen." The original 
cannot now be found in the Simancas Archives, 



436 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

world, little dreaming, poor soul, that the facilities 
provided were only a trap of her enemies. This 
was the first time she had communicated with 
Mendoza since his arrival in Paris a year before, 
and William Paget, the brother of Charles, was 
her messenger. He was to make certain proposals 
to him for Philip's aid to " our designs " ; but by 
far the most important part of the message came 
afterwards. The continued heresy of her son James 
had, she said, well-nigh broken her heart, and in 
order to secure the triumph of the Church " I 
will cede and make over by will to the King 
your master my right to the succession of the 
English Crown, and ask him to take me in future 
entirely under his protection, and also the affairs 
of this country. For the discharge of my own 
conscience I could not hope to place them in the 
hands of a Prince more zealous in our Catholic 
faith or more capable in all respects of re-establish- 
ing it in this country. ... I am obliged in this 
matter to prefer the public welfare of the Church 
to the aggrandisement of my posterity." 

Thus Mary finally embraced the Jesuit view which 
looked forward to a Spanish sovereignty over Eng- 
land to the detriment of her son and Scotland, and 
in opposition to many of her friends and adherents 
in England and France.^ To the King of Spain 
this renunciation of her son by Mary was of pro- 
found significance. His own English descent had 

^ That she knew this is seen in the letter where she implores 
Mendoza to keep the matter secret, or she will lose her French 
dowry. It is curious, however, that in the same letter she prays 
for rewards for Morgan and the Pagets, whom Parsons represents 
as being strongly anti-Spanish. 



PHILIP'S CLAIMS TO ENGLAND 437 

never been lost sight of, but here his claim was 
rendered legitimate apart from his ancestry ; and 
Mendoza, though when he received Mary's letter he 
had just been couched for cataract and was temporarily 
blind, caused a reply to be written to the Queen 
warmly commending her saintly resolution. She saw, 
he said, how evil her son was disposed, and the 
French had done little enough for her, whereas 
Philip had always befriended her. " Moreover," he 
wrote to Philip, " failing the Queen of Scots and her 
son, your Majesty is the direct legitimate heir to the 
Crown of England. Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, was 
in the habit of saying that the Duchy of Lancaster 
had been unlawfully usurped from your Majesty." ^ 
No wonder that Philip replied to this in what 
was for him an unusually effusive strain : " She 
[Mary Stuart] has greatly risen in my estimation 
in consequence of what she says, and has much 
increased the devotion I have always felt for her 
interests, not so much because of what she says 
in my favour, though I am very grateful for that 
also, as because she postpones her love for her son, 
which might be expected to lead her astray, for 
the service of our Lord, the good of Christendom, 
and the salvation of England. Tell her all this 
from me, and assure her that if she perseveres 
in the good path she has chosen I hope that 
God will bless her by placing her in possession 
of her own. You will add that I shall be happy 
to undertake the protection of her person and 
interests as she requests." 2 

^ Mendoza to Philip, 26th June, 1586. — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. iii. 

2 Philip to Mendoza, i8th July, 1586. — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. iii. 



438 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

This move of Mary's made it necessary for 
Philip to handle the question of the succession 
with more caution than ever in Rome, for if once 
the French and Italian Churchmen thought that 
he meant to seize the Crown of England for him- 
self, half Europe would have been ready to oppose 
him. So Olivares was ordered to " keep constantly 
before the eyes of his Holiness the advisability of 
choosing some firm Catholic, who on the exclusion 
of the King of Scots should take his place, and it 
is equally important to keep his Holiness to the 
point, binding him to agree to my nomination of a 
fit successor to the Queen of Scots in England." 
The reply from Philip gave Mary new hope. She 
had been deeply discouraged at the repeated failures 
of attempts to rescue her and overthrow Elizabeth, 
and the long delay of any effective aid from Philip 
had well-nigh driven her to despair. But now, 
surely, a new era of success was opening to her. 
Rumours reached even her in her prison of the 
great preparations being made in the Spanish and 
Portuguese ports for some vast naval enterprise ; 
whilst the open war between Elizabeth's troops and 
the Spaniards in Zeeland seemed to Mary to make 
certain and near the hour when Philip's arms 
should avenge the injuries done to him by finally 
crushing the heretic Queen and substituting Mary 
for her. Many times in the last six months, she 
wrote to Mendoza, she had turned a deaf ear to 
proposals of English Catholics for her deliverance : 
" But now that I hear of the good intentions of 
the Catholic King towards us I have written to 
the principal leaders of the Catholics here a full 
statement of my views on all points of the execution 



THE MURDER PLOT AGAIN 439 

of the enterprise. To save time I have ordered 
them to send to you with all speed one of their 
number, fully instructed to treat with you, In 
accordance with the promises given to you in 
general terms, and to lay before you all the 
requests they wish to make to the King. I assure 
you, on their faithful promise given to me, that 
they will carry out their undertakings, even at the 
risk of their lives. I therefore beg you to give full 
credit to their messenger as if I had sent him 
myself. He will tell you the means they have 
for getting me away from here, which I will attempt 
to effect on my own account if I am assured of 
armed aid." ^ 

Almost simultaneously with this the group of 
Ensflish Catholics who had sent Ballard to Men- 
doza in May were able to supply the ambassador 
with the details and assurances he had requested 
to prove the seriousness of their intention. Their 
envoy on this occasion was Gilbert Gifford, brother 
of the Dean of Lille, and, according to Parsons, a 
strong opponent of the Spanish-Jesuit party. He 
unfolded to Mendoza the existence of a vast con- 
spiracy in England, in which most of the Catholic 
nobles were implicated. The Earl of Arundel, son of 
the late Duke of Norfolk, and most of his kinsmen, 
with a score or so of other noblemen and gentry 
whose names Mendoza sent to Philip, were ready 
to rise in force whenever they were advised that 
the Spanish fleet was approaching. Sir William 
Stanley, in command of a large body of Irish- 
men intended for Flanders, would delay his depar- 

^ Mary to Mendoza, 27th July, 1586. — Spanish Calendar, 
vol. iii. 



440 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

ture if possible, revolt against the Queen, and join 
the invaders ; the English force in Ireland under 
Bele would do likewise, whilst Claude Hamilton 
and a force of Scots would join the Catholics of 
the North on the signal being given. The very- 
heretics themselves, they said, were ripe for revo- 
lution, tired of the burden of taxation ; but, above 
all, a young man named Babington and some six 
confederates ^ had determined to kill Queen Eliza- 
beth, in accordance with the suggestion previously 
made by them through Ballard. They only asked 
that Spain should support them when the deed was 
done. No Frenchmen should be concerned in the 
business, but promptitude was now vital, for every 
hour increased the risk of discovery ; and they prayed 
Philip to let them know at once what he would do to 
rescue England. 

Mendoza jumped at all these proposals, for, accord- 
ing to Gifford, the greatest men in England were 
pledged to the rising — as apart from Babington's 
murder plot ; even the moderate Catholics being 
pledged to it. Two letters went off at once from 
the Spaniard to the heads of the enterprise, ** praising 
the proposal as it deserved, as it was so Christian, 
just, and advantageous to our holy faith and to your 
Majesty's service, worthy of spirits so Catholic as 
theirs and of the ancient valour of Englishmen." 
If they succeeded in killing the Queen, promised 
Mendoza without authority, they should have the 
assistance they required from the Netherlands, and 
the assurance that King Philip would succour them. 
*' I promised them this on my faith and word, urging 

^ It was asserted by Mendoza that Raleigh was one of these, 
which is incredible. 



MENDOZA'S INDISCRETION 441 

them to hasten the execution." Directly they had 
despatched the Queen, wrote Mendoza to them, let 
them seize Don Antonio and the Portuguese with him 
and lodge him in the Tower ; get Sir William Stanley 
to seize the Queen's fleet, unless Lord Admiral 
Howard was a trustworthy party to the plot, and let 
them be sure to kill Cecil, Walsingham, Hunsdon, 
Knollys, and Beal at the same time as the Queen. 

Mendoza's hatred of Elizabeth outran his discretion, 
and in conveying all this to Philip he wrote: "Of all 
the plots they have hatched these many years past 
none have been apparently so serious as this. They 
have never before proposed to make away with the 
Queen, which is now the first step they intend to take. 
As she so richly deserves her punishment, it may be 
believed that God has heard the groans of the afflicted 
Catholics and desires to bring it upon her thus swiftly. 
Let Him dispose as He will ; but if, for our sins, He 
shall ordain that it do not succeed there will be much 
Catholic blood shed in England. Up to the present 
your Majesty is pledged no further than the risk of 
100,000 crowns, which have been given to the priests 
sent thither, and if secrecy be kept we need only 
watch what comes of it. If the Queen falls the 
country will submit without bloodshed, and the 
Netherlands war will be at an end." 

Philip was horrified when he received this letter, 
and scribbled upon its margin, in that appalling scrawl 
of his, scornful comments which showed that his cold, 
secretive nature rebelled against the rash enthusiasm 
of his usually discreet Mendoza. How could such a 
secret be kept, he asked, if all these people were 
chattering about it .-* How could the schismatics, or 
outwardly conforming Catholics, be trusted ? They 



442 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

were mere heretics and no better ; and how imprudent 
of Mendoza, his ambassador, to send to the con- 
spirators two such compromising letters as those 
mentioned ! Philip had heard too often in the past I 
of such plots as this, and he had thrown away already 
too much money in subsidising such adventures. 
Nothing but conquest, he was convinced, would serve 
his turn now ; and to that end he was bending all his 
energies night and day, penning the Pope closer into 
the corner, inflaming more than ever the French 
ambitions of Guise, and fomenting trouble in France ; 
and, above all, collecting stores, arms, and ships from 
all his vast dominions to crush Elizabeth for good and 
for all in the interests of the Church and Spain. 

But, withal, Philip was not a man to throw away a 
chance if he could gain it with a minimum of respon- 
sibility, and he blended his somewhat caustic remarks 
upon the lack of secrecy and caution displayed with 
saintly approval of the plan to murder his sister-in-law. 
"As the affair is so much in God's service," he wrote 
to Mendoza on the 5th September, " it certainly 
deserves to be supported, and we hope that our Lord 
will prosper it, unless our sins are an impediment 
thereto. It appears to be based upon a solid founda- 
tion and to have the support of many Catholics, but 
it is difficult to keep a secret entrusted to so many 
people, and it causes me anxiety that it should be so 
widespread, and even schismatics let into the secret. 
. . . But the importance of the matter is great, and 
perhaps the time has arrived when God will strike for 
His own cause." Philip left in no doubt his own 
attitude with regard to the matter. The Spanish aid 
should be ready, but should not be sent until the 
murder of Elizabeth had been effected. Let the 



PHILIP AND BABINGTON 443 

" principal executions " be done, he urged, without a 
moment's delay. " Everything depends upon the 
one act which is to be the commencement. When 
this is done they may with one voice acclaim it, and 
the way will be clear, whilst if the intention is dis- 
covered before its execution each one will be destroyed 
separately and union will be impossible. As all hangs 
upon this, and the cause is God's own, we must hope 
that He will prosper it." 

Gifford was sent on his way to England with the 
King's message, and soon the heavy hand of Walsing- 
ham fell upon the conspirators, who had all through 
been living in a fool's paradise, betrayed, as was 
Mary herself, by the instruments they thought so 
trusty and faithful. Philip had been right in his 
distrust ; once more conspiracy subsidised by Spanish 
intrigue and money had failed, more disastrously this 
time than ever before ; and the King of Spain, whilst 
deploring in conventional terms the dire fate of most 
of those upon whom he had depended for an auxiliary 
movement in England on the approach of his fleet, 
accepted the reverse with stolid philosophy. In one 
respect, indeed, it was to some extent a relief to him. 
There is no doubt that he greatly esteemed Mary 
Stuart for her steadfast Catholicism, and would have 
placed her upon the throne of England if his attempt 
at conquest had been successful during her life ; but 
there was always lurking in the background the fear 
that after her accession she might be drawn by French 
intrigue or maternal solicitude to adopt her son as her 
heir, in which case Philip's vast efforts and expendi- 
ture might have been in vain. But with Mary a 
condemned prisoner, whose head might fall at any 
moment, it was the present rather than the future 



444 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP * 

sovereignty of England that was now to be decided, 
and slowly, with the aid of Parsons and Allen, the 
claims of Philip to the English succession were 
advanced tentatively even in England itself, though 
not, as we shall presently see, with any intention of 
his personally assuming the sovereignty after Eliza- 
beth was disposed of. 

The question of Mary Stuart's complicity in 
Babington's murder-project is one that does not 
directly concern us here, but there can be but little 
doubt that, even though it was not conveyed to her 
in so many words, she was well aware of the whole 
plan. I At least Mendoza, who should have known, 
believed that she was ; for on the collapse of the 
conspiracy he wrote to Philip : " I am of opinion that 
the Queen of Scotland must h^ well acquainted with 
the whole affair, to judge by the contents of a letter 
she has written to me. . . . Doubtless it is God's will 
to give England to your Majesty by the strong arm 
only, since He has allowed so much Catholic blood to 
be lost, as will be shed by the discovery of this 
business. Nothing has been said yet about my letters, 
but even if they were discovered and printed they are 
so worded that another construction could be placed 
upon them." Mendoza was too sanguine in this 
respect. His letters were read and his conversations 
with the messengers repeated. There was no need 
on the part of Elizabeth and Walsingham to go out 
of their way to put harmless constructions upon his 

^ If the postscript to her letter to Babington of 17th July, 1586 
(Record Office, " Mary Queen of Scots," vol. xviii.), be genuine, 
as 1 believe, there can be no doubt of this, but her letter to the 
French ambassador, Chateauneuf (17th July), is also compro- 
mising (Labanoff). 



ALARM OF ELIZABETH 445 

words, which, indeed, were plain enough, and a shout 
of execration went up all over England at an ambas- 
sador who thus connived at the murder of a sovereign 
and a lady. 

Already the alarming reports of spies had aroused 
the worst fears of Elizabeth and her people. The 
Queen, particularly, dreaded the vengeance which 
seemed hanging over her. For years she had defied 
Philip and had beaten him in the game of diplomacy, 
depending for her immunity upon the continued war 
in the Netherlands and upon Philip's distrust of 
France. But she saw that France could not help her 
now, whatever her extremity, for the Guises were in 
arms and the wretched fribble upon the throne was 
but a straw borne hither and thither upon the tempest, 
whilst the Huguenots were grimly awaiting the hour 
when they themselves would have to fight for freedom 
and for life. The war in Zeeland, moreover, was 
now only maintained by English help, and when the 
dreaded Spanish descent upon England was made 
Elizabeth would have to abandon the Dutch Protes- 
tants to their fate, and the last bulwark of Reform 
would be submerged by the flood of Spanish popery. 

Once more Elizabeth played the outworn game 
that had served her turn so often before. Andrea de 
Loo and many other intermediaries hurried backwards 
and forwards at the instance of Burghley between 
London and Flanders, impressing upon the Duke of 
Parma the English Queen's earnest desire to come to 
terms with her "good brother." Let the Pacification 
of Ghent, which, had been accepted in the time of 
Don Juan, be re-enacted and all might be settled ; let 
a conference meet, in which mutual grievances might 
be arranged, and England and Spain should live 



446 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

happy together ever after. But Parma for a time 
gave stiff answers to all this, much as he knew that 
Flanders needed peace, for Philip kept him in the 
dark as to his real intentions, and he dared not act 
without precise instructions from the King. Other 
attempts were made to reopen the trade negotiations 
through Portuguese agents with a view to a general 
agreement, but Philip was irresponsive now ; for after 
half a lifetime of hesitation he had finally made up his 
mind. England must be conquered by the sword 
wielded by his hand alone ; and although he might 
feign to talk of peace to suit his purpose, there was in 
his slow-moving, inflexible mind thenceforward no 
peace possible with England until Elizabeth and her 
Government had been crushed. 

Another spirited attempt was made by Elizabeth 
to reach Philip direct. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, 
the famous explorer and Governor of Patagonia, had 
been captured at sea by one of Raleigh's ships. 
Usually such men were held for heavy ransom, but 
Sarmiento was received by the Queen at Windsor 
with every witchery she knew how to exert, and was 
impressed with her sorrow that such unhappy relations 
existed — God knew from no fault of hers — between 
her people and the Spaniards. Would Sarmiento con- 
vey a letter to his King, accepting his liberation as a 
reward for his doing so? Naturally nothing would 
suit Sarmiento better, and Raleigh carried him with 
all distinction to Durham House as his honoured 
guest, plying him with assurances of Sir Walter's 
desire to serve the King of Spain by putting a stop 
to all this piracy, of which the Queen herself and 
Lord Treasurer Burghley disapproved. Besides this, 
he (Raleigh) would sell a fine ship of his to Philip for 



PEACE OR WAR? 447 

5,000 crowns, would prevent any more aid being 
given to Don Antonio, and would, indeed, become 
Philip's humble servant in England. This was, doubt- 
less, nothing but one of the usual mystifications to 
divert Philip ; but the Queen herself gave a cordial 
verbal message to Sarmiento for the King, saying 
that she was really anxious to let bygones be bygones 
and make a durable peace. Sarmiento left London in 
November, 1586, and gave his message to Mendoza 
in Paris, but on his way to Spain was unlucky enough 
to be captured again, by Huguenots this time, near 
the Pyrenean frontier, and all Elizabeth's and Raleigh's 
influence was exerted to secure his prompt release. 
By all means accept Raleigh's offer to prevent further 
aid being given to Don Antonio and to stop piracy, 
wrote Philip ; but to the suggestions for direct peace 
negotiations he made no reply. 

In the meanwhile the arsenals and harbours of 
Philip's realms were ringing with preparations for the 
great enterprise. The peace conference so much 
desired by Elizabeth might meet in Flanders and 
talk, but no pause was made in the feverish activity 
in the Spanish preliminaries for war. Old Santa 
Cruz had waited patiently after the King's gentle 
rebuff to him in 1583,^ until the circumstances detailed 
in the foregoing pages had rendered war with Eng- 
land inevitable early in 1586, when he wrote to the 
King from Lisbon a letter full of fiery zeal, recalling 
his former offer to conquer England when his 
victorious fleet was ready, and deploring the shame 
that had fallen upon Spain since by reason of the 
continued insults and injuries inflicted upon it by the 
heretics, much to the material gain and moral prestige 

'^ See p. 420. 



448 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

of the Queen of England. They had, he said, 
plundered a million and a half of ducats in the last 
five months, and had defied the King of Spain 
successfully at all points. Everything was now pro- 
pitious, urged the admiral, for dealing a final blow at 
these daring heretics, and he prayed the King to arise 
in his wrath and smite his enemy before the occasion 
passed. " I am not moved to this," he proudly added, 
" by a desire for fresh battles or the ambition for new 
victories, but by no other motive than the service of 
God and your Majesty." 

This time the hero's appeal found the King ready, 
for all his peaceful diplomacy had failed to bring 
England to his side ; and Santa Cruz was requested 
to submit to the King a plan for carrying out the 
enterprise he proposed. It took Santa Cruz two 
months, as he says, to draw up from his papers and 
the experience of forty years at sea a complete 
scheme for the irresistible descent upon England ; 
and the estimate with which he furnished Philip 
stands to-day, after three centuries and a quarter, an 
unexampled monument of foresight, skill, and bold- 
ness. Nothing was forgotten in this prodigious 
estimate : naval and military requisites, arms, stores, 
clothing and material, down to the minutest detail, 
are set forth, with estimates of price and with surpris- 
ing clearness ; the salaries to be paid to men of every 
rank are given ; the weight and bulk of every article, the 
best place where it may be obtained, the rations to be 
provided, and the discipline to be observed on land 
and sea, are all written in due order, and to such a 
lover of formal papers as Philip the estimate of 
Santa Cruz must have been a pure delight from the 
bureaucratic point of view. 



SANTA CRUZ'S ESTIMATE 449 

Not so, however, with regard to the concentrated 
magnitude of the demands, greater than had ever 
been made for such an enterprise before. Santa Cruz 
wanted for the invasion of England 150 great ships, 
40 store hulks, 320 small craft of 50 to 80 tons burden, 
40 galleys and 6 galleasses, or 556 sail in all, besides 40 
skiffs and 200 landing rafts. There were needed 30,000 
sailors and nearly 64,000 soldiers, with 1,600 cavalry 
horses, all to be shipped from Spain, and this enormous 
multitude was to be provisioned beforehand for eight 
months with food and water. Deducting the ordinary 
cost of armaments in Spain, the extra estimated 
expense to be incurred by the enterprise was placed 
by Santa Cruz at 3,800,000 ducats. ^ The sum in 
money was much greater than Philip had ever had 
to provide in Spain for any one enterprise before, 
and it took him aback now. The Pope, it is true, had 
promised a million ducats, but not a soldo would he 
pay beforehand, and the Italian States might be 
coerced into contributing ; but the bulk of this vast 
sum in ready money had to be wrung somehow out of 
already exhausted Castile, and, anxious as Philip was 
to make assurance doubly sure, he knew that this 
was impossible ; so Santa Cruz's estimates had to be 
modified. 

The opportunity for the invasion, nevertheless, was 
one that could hardly be expected to recur. The cup 
of Elizabeth's provocations was full to the brim, and 
her anxiety to open peace negotiations proved her 
own apprehensions. France, for almost the first time, 
was paralysed and could not interfere. Leicester's 

^ Thjse were Castilian ducats worth -11 reals (2s. S^-d.), or 
;^4(^/,-«j'44> which would represent in present value nearly 

GG 



450 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

ineptitude in Holland had even turned the feeling of 
the Dutch against their protectors, whilst many of the 
English troops and their leaders, such as Roland York, 
Sir W. Stanley, and Colonel Semple had deserted to the 
Spanish side and had delivered to Parma the fortresses 
occupied by them. The Turk, moreover, was for the 
time harmless, and Don Antonio was already a dis- 
credited and waning force. So, although Philip did 
not approve of Santa Cruz's plan that the whole army 
should be embarked in Spain, he gave orders that the 
arsenals and dockyards should work night and day, 
and through Spain and Portugal, Sicily, Naples, and 
Lombardy there rang the echoes of warlike prepara- 
tions such as they had never known before ; whilst 
the recluse of the Escorial, shutting himself away 
from all other tasks, took counsel how he might effect 
his purpose with the means at his disposal. 

It is not to be supposed that the French and Scottish 
faction would sit tamely by and see without an effort 
the whole enterprise of England fall into the hands of 
Spain. The conversion of James Stuart was still a 
fervent hope with many who dreaded to see a Spanish 
king supreme in Britain ; and the English Jesuit 
faction had to fight hard against the Welsh, Scottish, 
French, and many English Catholics at home and 
abroad. James Stuart himself and the Scottish 
Catholic nobles were fully alive to the danger that 
threatened. The Scottish nobles, with the secret con- 
nivance of James, made a bold attempt to associate 
themselves with Philip's invasion, and to bring Guise 
again into the combination. Huntly, Morton, Claude 
Hamilton, Crawford, and Montrose, in the summer of 
1586, sent one Robert Bruce with three blank signed 
papers to the Duke of Guise in Paris, where the 



THE SCOTTISH PLAN 451 

letters over the signatures were written at Guise's 
dictation and addressed to Philip,^ begging him to 
Hsten to the verbal proposals of their envoy, Bruce. 
Guise and Beton introduced Bruce to Mendoza, and 
the gist of the proposals was that Philip should send 
to the Scottish Catholics 150,000 crowns to raise and 
arm soldiers, whom they would maintain for a year, 
and they also asked that a foreign force of 6,000 men 
should be sent to Scotland to secure the triumph of 
the Catholics, in consideration of which they promised 
to place at his disposal one or more ports in the south 
of Scotland to serve as a shelter and a base of opera- 
tions against England. Mendoza understood, as 
indeed did all experienced fighting-men, the immense 
importance of the latter suggestion ; for Santa Cruz 
from the first had insisted upon the need of seizing 
harbours in the Channel in case of contrary weather ; 
and Bruce was sped on his way to see Philip with all 
the support that the ambassador could give him. 

But Philip had had enough of Guisan meddling, and 
he had no intention of allowing the supreme effort he 
was making to be used for the benefit of any one but 
himself, and least of all for that of shuffling James 
Stuart. As usual, he did not say no plainly, for he 
had no wish to alienate the Scottish Catholics, or to 
arouse suspicions of his motives anywhere. So, 
gently suggesting doubts and difficulties, he referred 
the question to Mendoza and Parma for report, 
sending Bruce back to Paris with " fair words " and a 
letter to Guise "praising the zeal which moves you to 
strive so sincerely for the promotion of our holy 
Catholic faith." Mendoza was directed to keep the 

^ These letters (copied by me in the Paris Archives) are in the 
Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 



452 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Scots in hand, to suggest that they should ask the Pope 
for the money they needed, and to flatter Guise as 
much as he thought necessary ; all of which meant 
that Philip would not bind himself to Scot or French- 
man in the execution of his project, though, if on their 
own account and at their own risk they cared to divert 
his enemy, he had, of course, no objection to their 
doing so. But the offer of one or two safe ports in 
Scotland near the English border was one not lightly 
to be refused — its acceptance, indeed, might have 
changed the whole course of history — and Mendoza, 
an experienced soldier, wrote in October, 1586, to 
Parma strongly urging that the offer of the Scottish 
Catholics should be sympathetically entertained, in 
order that a diversion might thus be effected in the 
North simultaneously with the Spanish invasion of the 
South of England ; though here commended that full 
inquiries should be first made to ascertain to what 
extent Huntly and his friends could carry out their 
pledges. 

Parma, however, was almost as cautious as his 
uncle. He was, in fact, resentful that Philip was 
keeping him in the dark as to his ultimate plans, and 
was determined not to move a step in any direction 
beyond his written orders until he knew what the 
King was really aiming at ; whether to frighten 
Elizabeth into peace, which Parma more than sus- 
pected, or to crush her finally by war. So to Mendoza's 
almost vehement advocacy of the Scottish diversion 
Parma replied coolly, saying that the proposal would 
fail unless it formed part of the combined plan and 
was executed in co-operation simultaneously with the 
invasion, Mendoza grew more and more in love with 
Bruce's proposal, which would, he said, give harbours 



THE SCOTTISH PLAN 453 

of refuge for the Spaniards in the North Sea and 
divide the Queen of England's forces ; and here 
began the first whispers of Parma's half-hearted 
loyalty, I which amongst the vanquished officers of 
the Armada afterwards swelled into a tempest of 
indignant recrimination. 

Mendoza's inquiries of Bruce had satisfied all his 
doubts, and to Philip he wrote beseechingly on the 
24th December, 1586, in favour of the scheme. 
Some of the passages in his extremely able letter,^ 
read by the knowledge of the subsequent disaster 
of the Armada, sound almost prophetic. "It is of 
advantage to the English," he wrote, "that they 
should be attacked by a force which needs great 
sea fleets for its transport and maintenance, both on 
account of the immense sums of money which must 
be spent upon such an expedition, and the vast 
quantities of material and the length of time necessary 
for preparation, as well as the many opportunities 
which occur during this delay for impeding the pro- 

^ Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, had married a Portu- 
guese princess, and his children had a better right to the Crowns 
of Portugal and England than Philip had. The English Catholic 
refugees in Flanders were already suggesting that the young 
Prince of Parma should marry Arabella Stuart and reign over 
England when it had been conquered. Farnese himself was 
approached by different English parties, even by the moderate 
conforming Catholics in Elizabeth's Court duringthe negotiations, 
virith a view to divide him from the Spaniards on this question of 
the succession. The Spanish officers, after the defeat of the 
Armada, failing to understand the tactical reasons that kept 
Farnese inactive, openly accused him of treachery. There is 
no doubt that Farnese was hurt, and justifiably so, at the con- 
temptuous disregard for his children's rights, but he was certainly 
loyal to Philip. 

^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iii. 681. 



454 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

gress of such armaments. Such expeditions, more- 
over, are liable to much greater disasters than land 
armies, for in most cases the mere death of the 
leader suffices to frustrate them . . . and in the 
event of the loss of a great fleet the owner is 
deprived at one blow of forces, ships, and guns — 
things difficult to replace readily," It is clear now, 
with our later knowledge, that the old warrior- 
diplomatist — the last of the disciples of Alba, as he 
calls himself — was right in his appreciations, and 
that Philip made a fatal mistake in not following 
the advice of such men, instead of indulging in his 
fatal itch for retaining in his own hands all executive 
monopoly and all ultimate profit in his plans. 

But the advances of Huntly were not entirely 
rejected, for not only Mendoza, but Parma too, 
as time went on, saw their importance, and although 
the idea of invading England over the Scottish 
border was again vetoed, Bruce was sent back to 
Scotland after many months of impatient waiting in 
France and Flanders, carrying with him ten thousand 
crowns to freight ships in Scotland ostensibly for 
Dantzig, but really for Flanders, to embark there 
an auxiliary force to aid the Scottish Catholics in 
their intended rising. ^ Bruce went on his way late 
in the summer of 1586, with his doublet padded 
with gold, but when he arrived in Scotland the 
whole scheme was embroiled and frustrated with 
the usual ineptitude. It was too late in the season 
for the ships to be obtained. James Stuart was 
also consulted by the Scottish lords as to his joining 

^ Philip afterwards ordered that the aid should be confined to 
a money subvention, but Parma determined, if possible, to send 
the armed contingent, though the whole scheme fell through. 



MARY STUART'S BEQUEST 455 

the Spanish attack upon England to avenge his 
mother, with the result that was to be expected. 
Bruce and his companion, Foster, turned traitors 
when the plan was seen to be impracticable, and 
once more, and for the last time, Philip settled 
down to the inevitability of conquering England by 
himself alone, and for himself alone. 

It was more important now than ever it had been 
that he should succeed in doing it, for Henry III. 
of France was without a son, and was in bad health. 
If Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, became King, 
and France ceased to be a Catholic country and in 
alliance with Protestant England, the Catholic 
domination of Europe would be at an end, and the 
sun of Spain must sink rapidly. The conquest of 
England, indeed, must be effected, and the country 
made Catholic before Henry HI. died, or all, it 
seemed, would be lost; and Philip, after thirty years 
of paltering, was now in a desperate hurry. There 
was still another reason why Philip's zeal for the 
conquest of England should be further inflamed at 
this time. Mary Stuart was condemned to death, 
and in the bitterness of her heart she wrote the 
beautiful letter I to Mendoza (23rd November, 1586), 
in which she entrusted to Philip alone the task of 
avenging her and the cause for which she died, of 
providing for her servants, and, above all, of inherit- 
ing her rights to the succession of the Crown of 
England, which bequest she afterwards confirmed 
by a formal will. There was no longer any legal 
bar between Philip and the sovereignty, and no 
further fear of a doubtfully Catholic successor being 
adopted by Mary after her accession. With the 
^ Spanish Calendar, vols. iii. and iv. 



456 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

fall of the head of the Queen of Scots the spirits 
of the English Jesuit party rose, for they knew now 
that James and his countrymen would not be allowed 
to lord over Englishmen if once Philip held the 
country in his grasp. 

The subtle web of intrigue that had been spun 
for so many years past, the threads of which we 
have to some small extent endeavoured to unravel, 
had so far been favourable to Philip. He had 
patiently suffered numberless indignities and injuries 
at the hands of Elizabeth and her people ; he had 
seen England and his own Dutch provinces drift 
ever further away from him ; but he had never 
ceased to plot patiently in order to dispose affairs 
aptly for his vengeance when the propitious hour 
should strike. The Guises had been alternately 
flattered and frowned at, until their great ambitions 
in France seemed to hang upon Philip's will, and 
they dared not stir without his countenance. 
Henry III. had been by the same means rendered 
equally powerless to help England or to hinder 
Spain. The Scottish Catholics had been subsidised 
and cajoled, as had James Stuart himself, into a 
benevolent neutrality towards Philip with blended 
hopes and fears of the English succession. Mary 
Stuart had been so handled as to lead her to make 
Philip by will the heir to the English Crown ; and 
gradually all the strings which were intended to 
pull down the edifice of the Reformation were 
gathered into the hands of the gouty old monastic 
monarch in his granite cloister-palace on the bleak 
Castilian sierra. Each interest, as we have seen, 
had been silently and separately dealt with, and 
tricked into the position that best suited Philip's 



SUCCESSFUL CRAFT 457 

ends ; for he would take no risks that he could 
avoid, and aspired to imitate natural forces in the 
slow, insensible accumulation of power, which at the 
supreme moment might be launched by the master 
with irresistible effect. 

When, at length, the stealthy plotting had reached 
fruition, and Elizabeth saw herself isolated, with 
Henry III. and James VI. paralysed; when the 
Pope and the Cardinals understood that the Church 
and its cherished hoards were to be instruments of 
Spanish political ends ; when the Guises found that 
they and their kin were to be excluded from all 
share in the great prize of England ; and even the 
English Catholics of the more patriotic and moderate 
sort awoke to the knowledge that their religion and 
their scorn of the Scots were being used to forward 
a conspiracy against the independence of their country ; 
then each separate interest struggled as best it might 
to free itself from the toils in which the diplomacy of 
Philip had involved it. Allen, with his seminary, and 
the English Jesuits under Parsons, had gone over 
to the Spanish side bag and baggage, but the English 
Carthusians and seculars under Dr. Owen Lewis, 
and the large Scottish Catholic element in Rome 
under the Bishop of Dunblane, aided the Guisan 
Cardinals in combating the idea of a purely Spanish 
domination of England, and the contest went on 
bitterly and without cessation, especially after the 
death of Mary Stuart had made the fears more 
imminent. 

Before that had happened, Philip had instructed 
Olivares to sound the Pope cautiously, and, if 
possible, to obtain a brief from him, declaring 
Philip entitled to the throne of England after the 



458 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Queen of Scots, "as I cannot make war upon 
England for the purpose merely of placing upon the 
throne a young heretic like the King of Scots." 
The Pope's fears were to be lulled by the declara- 
tion that Philip had no intention of annexing 
England to the Crown of Spain, but of passing the 
sovereignty to some suitable Catholic candidate, 
perhaps to his daughter, the Infanta Isabel. Olivares, 
Allen, and Parsons knew at this time (January, 1587) 
that the Vatican was uneasy about the whole busi- 
ness, and they prayed the King to say nothing 
about his own claim openly until the Armada had 
been successful. But when, a month or two later, 
the news of Mary's death came, Philip was obliged 
to some extent to show his hand to the Pope, and 
the brief was ordered to be secretly asked for as 
a measure of precaution. Above all, Philip urged, 
not a word must be said about his claims to Guise 
or the Frenchmen. 

Unfortunately, much had already been said about 
them, even by Mendoza ; and Guise and Catharine 
de Medici, and James of Scotland himself, were all 
trying their utmost to prove how very Catholic the 
latter was, and what an excellent King of England 
he would make. Philip ordered that his claims upon 
England were only to be broached with the utmost 
caution to the English Catholics. In May, 1587, 
the King wrote to Mendoza : " You must only speak 
of my rights to well-disposed native Englishmen in 
order that they may be informed of the truth, and 
convey it to others of their nationality, that it may 
thus spread and gain ground amongst them. But 
do not mention the matter to Frenchmen and others, 
who will only take it up for the purpose of frus- 



PHILIP'S CLAIMS TO ENGLAND 459 

trating it." ^ To add to his authority in the 
matter, Philip urged successfully that Allen should be 
made a Cardinal, and he was well primed by 
instructions from Spain how to push the succession 
question with the Pope. Religion, of course, was to 
be the pretext. The King of Scots was a heretic, 
and unfit to succeed. For the good of the Church 
a Catholic of unquestionable orthodoxy should be 
chosen, and he must be powerful enough to keep 
England in the straight path. All this, of course, 
could only tend to the conclusion that Philip or his 
daughter alone would serve ; and very gradually and 
cautiously this view was made familiar to Catholics, 
to be struggled against fiercely by all those who 
were not absolutely under the Jesuit and Spanish 
influence. Parsons was indefatigable in writing 
letters, addresses, and memoranda in favour of this 
view, and the absolute quiescence of the moderate 
English Catholics when at last the Armada appeared 
in the Channel, and their loyalty through the crisis, 
was largely due to the unwise forcing of the idea 
of a Spanish Sovereign over England by the Jesuit 
propaganda. 

Elizabeth was no less active than the other 
threatened interests in her efforts to escape from 
the position in which she found herself. Still 
hoping against hope that the old policy of advance 
and retire might again be successful, she and 
Burghley strove heroically to arrange some form of 
peace congress with Parma through Andrea de Loo. 
It was not easy, for neither side was in a yielding 
mood in matters of procedure ; but Philip said that 
he saw no harm in entertaining the advances, which 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iv. 



46o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

he knew from the first he did not intend to have 
any result other than to lull Elizabeth into a false 
security, whilst his preparations advanced. The 
Burghley party in Elizabeth's Court had all the 
Puritans against them, and, more strongly still, the 
blue water school of sailors, who for years past 
had shown by their deeds that the Spaniards were 
no match for them at sea. " Why wait to be attacked 
on our own coasts," was their constant argument, 
" when we can go and crush our enemies before even 
they can leave port ? " 

The English ships had finer lines and lower bows 
than the Spaniards. They could sail several points 
nearer the wind ; and the need for ocean attack 
and defence had developed an entirely new school 
of seamanship, depending upon celerity of move- 
ment, broadside armament low down, by which the 
hulls of the enemy might be riddled between wind 
and water, whereas the Spanish ships depended 
still largely upon bulk, needful for the carriage of 
cargoes from the Indies, and the old tradition 
descended from the Mediterranean galleys of heavy 
armaments fore and aft. The attack in the Spanish 
system consisted only in grappling with the foe and 
pouring soldiers on board of him, the vessel being 
less of a fighting entity than a conveyance to bring 
the fighting-men on each side into contact, as galleys 
had been. Under Drake the English sailors had 
developed an ideal entirely distinct from this, namely, 
to avoid grappling, and by superior handiness of the 
craft to cripple the hulls of the enemy, and make them 
unseaworthy and incapable of manoeuvring. Again 
and again the English sailors had proved that the 
new methods were effective ; and whenever there was 



DRAKE'S METHODS 461 

a chance of meeting the Spaniards at sea, they eagerly 
sought it. 

It was this combination of sailors and the Puritans 
or Liberals, led by Leicester, that sought once more 
to force Elizabeth's hand in the midst of the negotia- 
tions for the peace conference with Parma early in the 
spring of 1587. The Portuguese spies in England 
continued to report to Mendoza the great preparations 
being made for a naval expedition, by Drake, in Ply- 
mouth and the Thames. Elizabeth and Burghley 
deeply distrusted a policy of daring aggression, and 
hesitated much to allow an attack upon Spain, though 
Leicester's influence and Drake's confidence ultimately 
carried the day. The secret of the destination of 
Drake's fleet was well kept. The pretence was 
cleverly maintained to the last that it was one more 
attempt to aid Don Antonio — this time, it was said, to 
go to the Indies ; and Mendoza, who reported almost 
daily to Philip what he heard, was hoodwinked all 
through. Drake arrived in Plymouth from the 
Thames on the 23rd March, in a hurry to get away, 
for fear the Queen would alter her mind and order 
him back. He had obtained her commission — " to 
prevent or withstand any enterprise against her High- 
ness's dominions, and especially to prevent the con- 
centration of the King of Spain's squadrons " — and he 
was authorised to " distress the ships as much as 
possible, both in the havens and on the high seas." 
Drake knew that as soon as he left Court attempts 
by the moderate party would be made to spoil and 
hamper his plans, for his Vice-Admiral, Borough, a 
Queen's officer, had been sent with him only to serve 
as a clog upon his actions, and Elizabeth was still full 
of faith in the insincere peace negotiations. Sure 



462 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

enough, only a few hours after he hurriedly sailed 
from Plymouth, a royal order came thither from 
London, happily too late, " to forbear to enter forcibly 
any of the said King's ports or havens, or to offer any 
violence to his towns or ships in harbour, or to do any 
act of hostility on land." Drake took very good care 
that these timid orders never reached him until too 
late to stay his hand, and went on his way as usual, in 
defiance of Borough's warning. 

Slowly, and with infinite difficulty, stores, arms, and 
material were being collected in Spain. The roads 
were bad, communications laborious, and Philip's 
centralising methods clogged the wheels of progress. 
Old Santa Cruz was labouring early and late, in 
Lisbon, making ready such great ships as could be 
collected in the Tagus ; whilst in the ports of 
Andalusia the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the great 
magnate of the Province, had seized for the King all 
the merchant ships and stores ; and was actively 
getting ready to sail from Cadiz and join Santa Cruz 
in Lisbon in the early summer, and, together with 
other vessels expected from Italy and the Biscay ports, 
attempt the conquest of England. Thus matters stood 
in April, 1587. Santa Cruz was almost in despair, 
for he profoundly disliked the modification of his 
plans adopted by Philip, by which the bulk of the 
army under Parma was to cross in small boats to 
England when the Armada should arrive off the 
North Foreland to protect its passage from Dunkirk 
to the Thames, and the command was to be divided, 
Santa Cruz to be supreme at sea and Parma on land. 
The ships in Lisbon were still unready, and the crews 
and soldiers were joining in mere driblets from distant 
parts of Spain. The provisions, too, for all his host 



DRAKE AT CADIZ 463 

came in slowly, and much of the stores rotted before 
they could be used. The ships from the eastern ports 
of Spain and from Naples and Messina were lagging ; 
for delay was inevitable when every detail had to be 
directed by one overworked old man far away. 

Then suddenly, on the i8th April, 1587, the people 
of Cadiz saw in the offing a fleet of thirty white sail. 
" Some contingent of the Armada," thought the Duke 
of Medina Sidonia, busy with his stores inside the 
harbour. It was nothing so welcome as that ; for it 
was the terrible Drake himself, with his stout ships, 
bent upon mischief, notwithstanding Elizabeth's timid 
wavering and her Admiral Borough's warning. 
Looking up the harbour of Cadiz, Drake could see 
a forest of masts, many a tall ship, he knew, that was 
intended for the subjugation of his country. They 
were, for the most part, store ships, nearly a hundred 
of them altogether ; and though they were crammed 
with provisions and material, neither their guns nor 
their crews were on board. Into the harbour dashed 
Drake, sinking the big galleon at the entrance that 
served as a guardship, and disdaining the fire of the 
protecting forts, and soon he had all the harbour at 
his mercy. The very name of Drake appalled the 
Spaniards, and without impeachment he turned adrift 
and set on fire some twenty-five of the principal ships. 
Soon the great crowd of galleons was a blazing ruin, 
and in the three weeks that followed Drake deliberately 
annihilated in the harbour of Cadiz the results of a 
year's work and vast expenditure. Then, on the ist 
May, 1587, he leisurely sailed away, secure in the 
knowledge that, come what might, no invasion of 
England by Spanish ships was possible for that 
summer. 



464 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

In the Tagus, at Lisbon, there still lay the fifty 
great galleons, under Santa Cruz, which were to form 
the principal fighting force of the Armada, and as 
Drake stood off the mouth of the river, they looked 
tempting. He was more than half inclined to sail in 
and serve them as he had served the Cadiz ships ; but 
he did not know whether they had their great guns on 
board or not. Whilst he was ascertaining this by his 
spies the peremptory orders came to him from the 
Queen that he was to provoke the King of Spain no 
more : the great fighting ships of Spain, with no 
crews or guns on board, were left unattacked, to 
Drake's abiding regret, and the chance of making the 
invasion of England by Spain impossible altogether 
was missed through Elizabeth's belief that by her 
usual methods she might avoid war, even at this 
eleventh hour. The damage done by Drake was in 
great part irreparable. Not only were many stores 
and ships destroyed in Cadiz, but for weeks after- 
wards the English fleet lay off the coast of Portugal, 
capturing great numbers of vessels loaded with pipe 
staves,^ for the water and wine casks of the Armada. 
These could not be quickly replaced, and their loss led 
to the short and bad water supply in the fleet, which 
was one of its worst calamities. When Drake sailed 
away, Spain was crippled for a time ; and the capture 
of the rich Indies galleon, San Felipe, completed the 
discomfiture of King Philip, who had no alternative 
now but to order Santa Cruz to make ready his ships 

^ To prove the importance of this point, one of Mendoza's 
arguments in favour of the proposal of Huntly and the Scottish 
CathoHcs to attack England across the Border by land instead 
of by an invading fleet, was the great cost of the pipe staves, 
which he said had already been 150,000 ducats. 




QUEEN ELIZABETH 

PHE VAIN'TING BY MAKC GHEERAEDTS AT THK NATIONAL PORTRAIT CJALLEKY 



PARMA AND THE ARMADA 465 

in Lisbon, in a hurry, not now to invade England, but 
to prevent Drake from intercepting and plundering 
the silver fleet, whose safe arrival in Spain would 
alone enable Philip to proceed with his plan of inva- 
sion in the following year. The injury inflicted by 
Drake's raid was a terrible one to Philip, but he 
plodded on, still convinced of the goodness of his 
methods and the ultimate certain victory of his 
cause. 

To Parma, in Flanders, the news of Drake's attack 
brought anguish and discouragement beyond words, 
for he was less blinded by fervour than his uncle was, 
and was brought nearer to his practical difficulties. 
He was a great commander and saw plainly the weak 
points of Philip's scheme for the Armada, so far as it 
was communicated to him. A divided command and 
strictly limited authority were repugnant to him, a 
sovereign Prince and practically supreme in Spanish 
Flanders ; and from the first he was determined that 
no blame for the failure which he feared would attend 
the attempt should be laid at his doors in con- 
sequence of his exceeding the strict letter of the 
King's written instructions. Pie had strained every 
nerve to muster and equip his troops to be ready for 
the expected arrival of Santa Cruz with his fleet in 
the summer of 1587, and now he found himself with a 
large force of men, and short of money, provisions, 
and stores for their maintenance. But he was a 
general of resource, and utilised his army to capture 
the Sluys and invest Ostend and so improve his posi- 
tion before the English Peace Commissioners, the 
Earls of Derby and Hertford, Lord Cobham, Sir 
James Crofts, and Drs. Dale and Herbert, went over 
in the autumn of 1587, in the chimerical hope of 



466 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

making peace with Philip. Leicester, Walsingham, 
and the sailors wondered aloud how her Majesty- 
could be so blind as to believe that peace with Philip 
was possible now. Exhortations and prayers reached 
Elizabeth, from those who knew Philip's intentions 
well, that she would allow another bold stroke to be 
dealt upon the enemy's heart ; but her parsimony and 
belief in her methods made her turn a deaf ear to 
all such urging, and England still stood unready in 
the face of danger so imminent and dire. 

Whilst Parma was still spinning matters out with 
the English Peace Commissioners on fine-drawn 
points of etiquette and procedure, in order to give 
time for really illuminating instructions to reach him 
from Philip, and Elizabeth was living still in her 
fool's paradise, the plan of the Armada was finally 
settled ; for Philip, dead against the advice of his 
seamen, had determined to send out the expedition at 
all risks, in the autumn of 1587, as soon as Santa 
Cruz returned from convoying the silver fleet. The 
letter in which he conveyed his plan to Parma on the 
4th September, 1587, is worth quoting at some 
length.^ The Armada, under Santa Cruz, was to sail 
up the Channel, avoiding, if possible, any decisive 
engagement, until it had reached the Straits of Dover 
and had joined hands with Parma. " We calculate that 
by the time you have invested Ostend you will have 
30,000 men ready for the main business, whilst 16,000 
Spanish infantry, a part of them veterans, will go in 
the Armada from here, the whole force of soldiers and 
sailors in the fleet reaching 22,000 men. I have 
decided that as soon as the Marquis of Santa Cruz 
returns with the flotillas to Cape St. Vincent ... he 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iv. 135. 



THE PLAN OF THE ARMADA 467 

shall leave them in charge of the galleys, and himself 
go straight to Lisbon, where he will take command of 
the fleet which will there await him, and, with God's 
blessing, sail direct for the English Channel. On his 
arrival he will anchor off Margate, having given notice 
to you at Dunkirk of his approach. You in the mean- 
while will be quite ready, and when you see the 
passage assured by the arrival of the fleet off Margate 
or at the mouth of the Thames, you will, if the 
weather permits, immediately cross over in the boats 
you will have ready. You and the Marquis will then 
co-operate, you being in command on land, and he at 
sea ; and, with the help of God, will carry through 
the main business successfully. Until you have 
crossed, the Marquis is not to be diverted by any- 
thing from assuring your passage. His taking 
possession of Margate will cut the communications of 
the enemy, and prevent him to some extent from con- 
centrating his forces. When you have landed (the 
Marquis giving you six thousand selected Spanish 
infantry as ordered), ' I am inclined to leave to the 
Marquis's discretion what he should do with the fleet, 
whether to stay and ensure the passage of our people 
from Flanders to England and intercept any foreign 
aid that might be sent to the English, or to go and 
capture some port and divert the enemy's strength ; or 
else he might go and seize English ships lying in 
various ports, to deprive them of maritime forces, 
upon which their strength mainly depends. You will 
settle this point between you, the Marquis carrying 
out your joint decision, whilst you will hasten to the 

^ This had been, and continued to be, an absolute condition 
of Parma's, without which he would not move at all. We shall 
see how the promise was treated. 



468 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

front to conduct the enterprise on the lines laid down. 
I trust to God, in whose service it is done, that success 
may attend the enterprise, and that yours may be the 
hand to execute it." 

The advice of all his best soldiers and sailors had 
failed to move Philip on one point because he knew 
that it meant delay, and he was ready now to risk 
everything rather than wait any longer. " We are 
quite aware of the risk incurred by sending a heavy 
fleet in the winter through the Channel without a sure 
harbour ; but the various reasons which render this 
course necessary are sufficient to counterbalance the 
objections. As it is all for His good cause, God send 
good weather. The most important of all things is 
that you should be so completely ready when the 
Marquis arrives at Margate that you may be able to 
do your part at once without delay. You will see the 
danger of any tardiness, the Armada having to wait 
there with you unready ; as until your passage is 
effected they will have no harbour for shelter, whereas 
when you have crossed he will have the safe, spacious 
river Thames. Otherwise he will be at the mercy of 
the weather, and if, which God forbid, any misfortune 
should happen to him you will understand what a 
state it would put us into. All will be assured, please 
God, by your good understanding ; but do not forget 
that the forces collected and the vast monetary 
responsibility incurred make it extremely difficult for 
any such expedition to be organised again, if they 
[the English] escape us this time; whilst the obstacles 
and divisions which may, and certainly will, arise next 
summer, force us to carry through the enterprise this 
year or fail altogether. I hope this will not occur, 
but that great success may attend us by God's grace, 



A DOOMED ENTERPRISE 469 

since you are to be the instrument, and I have bounti- 
fully supplied you with money. I have told you how 
all our prestige is now at stake, and how entirely my 
tranquillity depends upon success being achieved, and 
I now once more earnestly enjoin you to justify the 
trust I place in you. Pray send me word that there 
shall be no shortcomings in this respect, as I shall be 
full of anxiety till I hear from you." 

Thus, like a desperate gambler, Philip at last, 
after all these years of waiting and planning, was 
ready to stake everything — fleet, army, resources, 
prestige, and the cause for which he had lived — with 
the chances of success and the warnings of experience 
dead against him. For years past his expert advisers 
had been telling him how much superior in staunch- 
ness and seaworthiness the English ships were to 
his, that the new naval construction and armament, by 
which the artillery fire was delivered low and from 
the broadside, gave an enormous advantage to the 
handy English craft, which, by reason of their finer 
lines and weatherly qualities, could avoid fighting at 
close quarters. Santa Cruz, Parma, and Mendoza 
had pointed out to him the rashness of taking a vast, 
unwieldy fleet in the late autumn, the worst period of 
the year, up the Channel without a harbour of refuge 
in case of contrary winds or tempest ; again and again 
he had been told that his ships were still unready, his 
stores and arms unconcentrated, and his army but 
partially mustered in various provinces of Spain and 
Italy. All this he knew, and yet in the face of 
disorganisation, incapacity, and corruption in his 
administration, of almost insuperable material diffi- 
culties in collecting and supplying such an enormous 
fleet as that contemplated, the growing alarm and 



470 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

the opposition of all Christendom to his designs, 
he trusted, in the absence of all the mundane ele- 
ments of success, to the special intervention of 
Providence in his favour. Patience and diplomacy- 
had brought the possibility of success within his 
reach, but patience and diplomacy can be worked 
by the methods of a chess-player in a monastic 
cell, whilst armies and fleets must be raised, 
organised, and led by practical men on the spot, 
and this was where Philip failed. All power and 
initiative must be his, whilst he sat upon his office 
chair, annotating, checking, and dictating from 
morn till night, but never coming within hundreds 
of miles of executive action. 

In obedience to Philip's fervent exhortations 
Parma did his best, keeping his army of German, 
Italian, and Walloon mercenaries in good heart and 
readiness whilst the sham peace preliminaries went 
on. Most of the English Commissioners them- 
selves were soon satisfied that nothing would come 
of their mission, for months were wasted in discuss- 
ing and wrangling over such questions as the place 
of meeting, the sufficiency of powers, and the 
points to be discussed, though Croft, representing 
the moderate Catholic party in England, strained 
his loyalty to the utmost to conciliate Parma. ^ 
But still the Armada came not, though the winter 
of 1587 wore on and Parma's painfully gathered thirty 

^ There is, unfortunately, no space here to give details of 
the endless pourparlers that went on. Much of the corre- 
spondence from the English Commissioners is in the Flanders 
Papers in the Record Office, and in British Museum Cotton 
MSS. Vespasian CVII., whilst Parma's letters on the subject 
to Philip are abstracted in the Calendars of Spanish State 
Papers, vol. iv., under the editorship of the present writer. 



A DOOMED ENTERPRISE 471 

thousand men-at-arms were rapidly melting away, 
demoralised by short commons and dying by 
thousands of the plague. Not even Parma's 
extremity could move Santa Cruz to take a course 
that he knew would end in disaster. When he 
returned to Lisbon from convoying the silver fleet, 
he told Philip flatly that it would be certain disaster 
to take the Armada out at such a season of the year, 
the ships and men, moreover, being unready. Scorn 
and derision were poured upon the old admiral by the 
nobles and soldiers, as well as by the bureaucrats who 
were at the King's elbow, though the sailors who had 
met the English on many seas knew that Santa Cruz 
was right. "Once let us grapple with the heretics," 
cried the vapouring men-at-arms, " and all will be 
well ; the sailorman's task Is but to bring us face 
to face with the foe and we shall know how to deal 
with him." Philip rarely reproached those who served 
him, but even his almost inexhaustible patience gave 
way, and his curt, cold words of reproach to Santa 
Cruz for his tardiness In serving him broke the old 
hero's heart, and In February, 1588, there passed 
to his grave the one man In Spain who perchance 
might have rescued from otherwise inevitable catas- 
trophe the Armada and the mighty freight of hopes 
it bore. 

Philip was. Indeed, nearly at his wits' end, though 
personally he never lost faith In ultimate success. 
SIxtus was growing more and more sarcastic, and 
unwilling to pledge himself further to a policy which 
he now understood was making religion the stalking- 
horse of politics, Olivares might rail insolently at 
the Pontiff as a garrulous old curmudgeon, Cardinal 
Allen and Father Parsons, by word and pen, might, 



472 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

and did, urge with bland eloquence the saintliness 
of the enterprise and the holy aims of the Catholic 
King ; but all Europe now was aware and appre- 
hensive of Philip's overwhelming schemes — not against 
England alone, it was feared, but against all those who 
questioned the political supremacy of Spain. By 
every courier went frantic appeals and remonstrances 
from Parma to Philip, as week after week passed 
and no Armada appeared in the Straits of Dover. 
The army was getting out of hand, he said, and, 
what with plague and discontent, would soon dis- 
appear altogether, whilst of money he had none, and 
even his credit was exhausted. 

In December, 1587, Philip, apparently in despera- 
tion, thought that Parma, failing the coming of 
the Armada, might have made a dash across the 
Straits on his own account, and have captured 
England by a co74.p-de-main, whilst the peace pre- 
liminaries were being discussed. Parma, who was 
a practical soldier, was furious at such a suggestion, 
as well he might be. Writing to the King on the 
31st January, 1588, he asks how could he be expected 
to do what he had the King's strict orders to avoid 
doing. He had laid down clearly, he said, the 
necessary conditions of success ; namely, that the flat 
boats and skiffs, too small for fighting and unfit to 
weather a freshet, much less a storm, should be 
ensured an absolutely unimpeded passage across, 
whilst the French should be kept busy at home, and 
the Dutch rebels rendered powerless for harm. 
" Your Majesty ordered me to undertake this business, 
and be fully prepared, though the time given to 
me was short and my resources were limited. I have 
done my best to perform the impossible m order 



PARMA'S PROTESTS 473 

to please you and carry out my duty. . . . Affairs 
have been unduly drawn out, both men and money 
have been delayed beyond the time indicated, and 
particularly the Spanish troops, who are the sinew of 
the whole business, and who have, after all, come 
in less number than agreed upon, and so dilapidated 
and maltreated as to look unfit for service for some time 
to come. The Italians and Germans have dwindled 
in consequence of having to march quickly in very 
bad weather, and they are so badly housed to keep 
them near the ports that many are missing ; and our 
men are dying and falling away rapidly. I have 
strained every nerve to keep them near the coast 
to be ready for the arrival of Santa Cruz with the 
Armada . . . and now I see that everything has 
turned out wrong and contrary to my hopes. 
Secrecy, which was of the utmost importance, has 
not been maintained. From Spain, Italy, and else- 
where come full details of the expedition. The King 
of France, as well as the League, has raised 
enormous forces, and they, being Frenchmen, are 
certainly not likely to be in our favour. Holland 
and Zeeland have armed as promptly as usual, and 
have prevented the few ships of our fleet in Antwerp 
from getting out, whilst the English themselves 
are preparing for their defence with great energy. 
. . . If the Marquis had come in good time the 
crossing might then have been easily effected, by 
God's help, as neither the English nor the Hollanders 
and Zeelanders were then ready." 

Then Parma passionately protests against Philip's 
attitude. Let the King, he says, tell him plainly what 
he wishes him to do. He will do it at all risks and at 
any cost ; but to give him orders to do one thing and 



474 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

expect him to do another in quite impossible circum- 
stances is unfair. The position has changed, he 
continues, and the force brought by the Armada must 
be an overwhelming one to clear the seas or the 
troops from Flanders cannot cross. " The delay- 
in the coming of the Armada is causing the total 
ruin of Flanders, and is hardly less disastrous to the 
rest of the States. The country can bear the 
burden but a short time longer. The greatest 
trouble of all is my lack of money. The cost of 
maintaining the boats, the keep of the soldiers, the 
subsidy to Guise and Lorraine, and the contract with 
the German mercenaries, is all so great that your 
Majesty must provide me with a great sum of money. 
If I run short, as indeed I am doing, your Majesty 
may be certain that evil will befall and all the past 
expenditure and effort will be wasted." ^ 

Two months after this, when the death of Santa 
Cruz had cast a still deeper gloom over the pros- 
pects of the Armada, Parma, now quite disillusioned, 
and convinced that the great enterprise would fail, 
urged Philip earnestly to allow him to turn the 
feigned negotiations for peace into real ones. " I 
should fail in my duty," he wrote, ** if I did not tell 
your Majesty that the general opinion is that if 
the English are proceeding straightforwardly, as 
they profess, and their alarm at your Majesty's 
preparations and great power really inclines them 
towards you, it would be better to conclude peace 
with them. We should thus end the misery and 
calamity of these afflicted States, the Catholic 
religion would be established in them, and your 
ancient dominion restored. Besides this, we should 
^ Spanish Calendar, vol. iv. 



PARMA ADVOCATES PEACE 475 

not jeopardise the great fleet which your Majesty 
has raised, and we should escape the danger of some 
disaster causing you to fail in the conquest of England 
whilst losing your hold of the Netherlands. It is 
thought that It would be much best to try to settle and 
pacify everything during your own happy reign, so that 
all might prosper by the grace of God and your 
Majesty's goodness. Nothing more honourable and 
beneficent could happen to us, no step would be more 
heartily welcomed by your vassals, or more effectually 
check your rivals, especially the heretics, than a good 
and honourable peace. We should thus avoid the 
danger of disaster. If the enterprise were in the 
condition we expected it to be, and secrecy had been 
kept, we might, with God's blessing, have looked 
more confidently for a successful issue. But things 
are not as we intended. The English have had time 
to arm by land and sea, and form alliances with the 
Danes and the German Protestants. . . . They are 
well aware of our plans, and we shall have plenty 
of work to do in effecting a landing and advancing 
afterwards, especially if our force is inadequate." ^ 

And thus, point by point, the greatest soldier of his 
time lays bare in letter after letter the weakness of 
Philip's position and the hopelessness of success in the 
circumstances. But to all Parma's remonstrances and 
advice the King had but one cold, precise reply. 
The expedition was to go in God's own service, and 
it would be duly carried through by His help. That 
being the case, Parma could only stand more stiffly 
than ever upon the absolute fulfilment of his condi- 
tions, without which he knew that failure and disgrace 
would befall him. The sea must be kept clear of 

^ Parma to Philip, 20th March, 1588. — Spanish Calendar. 



476 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

enemies before he would embark a man for England, 
and he must have six thousand Spanish veterans from 
the Armada or he would not undertake the conquest. 
To Philip's embarrassments there seemed no end. 
His greatest military officer thus predicted disaster, 
and would take no responsibility beyond the letter 
of his instructions, and Santa Cruz, his greatest 
seaman, had assumed the same attitude for similar 
reasons. 

But the death of Santa Cruz in February plunged 
the King into deeper difficulty than ever ; for 
although it allowed him to control the details of 
the command more completely than Santa Cruz 
would have allowed him to do, he had no officer 
of sufficient rank, authority, and experience to re- 
place the dead admiral. Seamen he had, many of 
them fine mariners from the Biscay coast, who had 
commanded the great flotillas from the Indies, and 
had faced with varied fortune the English plunder- 
ing craft any time these twenty years ; but the 
tradition lingered that the seaman was a mere 
drudge to carry the nobler soldier into the fight, 
and the quarrelsome, haughty soldier nobles scorned 
to serve under a man who was a seaman only. 
The men in nominal command of the great ships 
were nearly always military officers whose orders 
the shipmasters obeyed. So although Oquendo, 
Bertondona, and Recalde, with a half score of others, 
were as splendid sailors as ever ploughed the seas, the 
supreme command of the Armada could not be given 
to such as they. The Spanish nobles were jealous of 
each other, each standing upon his dignity in a way 
that to modern men looks ridiculous, but which to 
them was a matter of the first concern in life. 



MEDINA SIDONIA 477 

The man to be appointed to command, since the 
King himself could not go, must be of rank so 
exalted as to overtop the rest, and yet so amenable 
to Philip's control as to allow the fleet to be com- 
manded practically by the King from his writing- 
table. The only man in Spain who seemed to unite 
in himself these two qualities was appointed by Philip 
to lead the fleet upon which depended the fate of 
Spain and Catholic Christendom, and he was of all 
men the least fit to carry to success such a forlorn 
hope as the Armada — the Duke of Medina Sidonia, 
the magnate and admiral of Andalusia, who had been 
so busy collecting ships and stores in Cadiz and his 
other ports. He was a dignified noble of early middle 
age, well meaning and not without administrative 
ability in normal circumstances, though utterly un- 
equal to deal with critical conditions. His high rank 
was sufficient to ensure the obedient respect of the 
other nobles and to hold the sailor commanders in 
awe. But, as he plaintively protested to the King, in 
dismay, when he was first informed of his appointment, 
he was utterly inexperienced in practical warfare both 
on land and sea. He knew nothing of navigation, he 
was alv/ays wretchedly seasick as soon as he lost sight 
of land, and he was quite unable to bear the expense 
which such a command entailed. His wife and friends 
were more emphatic still, and ridiculed the idea that 
such a poor creature as this should assume a responsi- 
bility so tremendous. Perhaps Philip was not sorry to 
have a weak and timid commander who would not 
dare to depart a hair's breadth from his orders. At 
all events, his mind ,was made up ; and Medina 
Sidonia, with a shrinking heart and unwilling spirit, 
was forced to go to Lisbon to replace the great 



478 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Santa Cruz as the Captain-General of the Invincible 
Armada. ^ 

The Tagus was crowded with ships when, in 
March, 1588, Medina Sidonia took command. 
Eleven huge galleons, contributed by Portugal, 
headed by the flagship San Martin, was to be the 
squadron of the high admiral. The Andalusian 
squadron of fifteen vessels was to b^ led by Don 
Pedro de Valdes ; and the famous Biscay seamen 
Oquendo and Martinez de Recalde were to lead 
other squadrons, and Diego Flores yet another. 
There were thirty-one armed store-ships, all carrying 
their quota of fighting-men as well as sailors, seven- 
and-twenty pinnaces and sloops, and four armed galleys, 
such as in the Mediterranean formed the Spanish 
fighting force. In all 114 ships lay there before 
the white city of Lisbon on its amphitheatre of 
hills. Gallant and strong they looked with their 
carved and gilded prows, their fluttering silken 
banners, and the soaring crucifix upon the highest 
pinnacle of their bows. But, alas ! the dry-rot of 
Philip's system was at the very heart of the 
enterprise. The soldiers came still in driblets and 
unwillingly. Arms were accumulating in one part 
of Spain, whilst the men to bear them were 
mustered in another. Stores went astray or re- 
mained bogged and derelict many miles from their 
destination ; wine ran short and water went bad 
upon the ships. The long delay had caused the 
bottoms to foul and the seams to gape ; and the 
overburdened Duke of Medina Sidonia could but 

^ The letters of Medina Sidonia and Philip have been printed 
in Spanish by Captain Fernandez Duro in " La Armada 
Invincible." 



MEDINA SIDONIA 479 

clamour more piteously than Santa Cruz had done 
for more supplies, more men, more arms, more 
money, more everything, unless disaster were to fall 
upon the expedition. The Irish and English Catholics 
on the quays of Lisbon, and the priests and friars 
who flocked everywhere, made light of difficulties. 
Was it not God's own fleet, going upon His errand, 
and could He be beaten ? Was not England tired to 
death of their heretic Queen and her ministers ? and 
was not a whole nation waiting with open arms to 
welcome those who came as friends and deliverers? 
And the haughty, confident Spanish nobles, courtiers, 
and soldiers, fretting in idleness, scoffed and reviled 
the timid councils of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. 
But the sailormen shook their heads sadly. They 
knew that Biscay storms and Channel gales could 
not be controlled by swords and pikes, and that at 
sea Drake and the West-country ships could sail 
several points closer to the wind than could their 
lumbering round-bowed galleons that looked so 
mighty. 

No day passed without some fresh demand from 
Medina Sidonia ; and at last Philip himself, long- 
suffering as he was, began to lose patience, for the 
spring was wearing on, and Parma, in despair, was, 
as we have seen, praying him either to abandon 
the enterprise or send him means for keeping together 
his dwindling army. At length, in April, it was 
impossible to hide any longer the open complaints 
of the soldier nobles. Medina Sidonia's insatiable 
demands, they said, were prompted by sheer cowardice, 
with a view to preventing the sailing of the expedition 
altogether. Already he had under his command the 
strongest force that ever sailed the seas — 130 vessels 



48o TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

of an aggregate tonnage of 58,000 tons, 2,431 cannon, 
and 30,000 men, between soldiers and sailors. All 
was ready. The orders to the fleet had been given 
long since — orders that prescribed a code of conduct 
for the rough seamen and men-at-arms such as would 
have befitted a convent school. There was to be no 
bad language or loose talk, no dicing or card-playing, 
no evil living. Prayers and Masses were to be sung 
daily, and every man, high and low, was to be con- 
fessed and absolved ; for all were going on a sacred 
crusade against the foes of God and the faith. The 
friars and priests, both on the ships and ashore, ex- 
horted ceaselessly all these reckless soldiers and half- 
savage sailors, until, with hearts aflame, they too 
began to scowl at the tardy Duke, who alone seemed 
to hold them back from their heaven-sent mission. 

At length, at the end of April, peremptory command 
came from Philip that the Armada must sail at once. 
The old orders to Santa Cruz were repeated. The 
fleet must go straight up the Channel to the North 
Foreland, avoiding an engagement if possible, until 
the main body of the English fleet should be met, as 
he thought it would, off Margate, where it was to be 
defeated or held in check, and then Parma and his 
army were to be protected on their way across to the 
Thames. All difficulties and dangers In such a plan 
were ignored or smoothed over by Philip. The 
warnings of years had been lost upon him. He still 
counted upon his big ships outmanoeuvring and gain- 
ing the wind of the English craft ; he still believed 
that the old grappling tactics were possible, in the face 
of Drake's new strategy and the superior build of the 
English ships. And he broke faith with Parma too. 
Parma had never wavered In his condition. He 



THE ARMADA SAILS 481 

would not cross the sea until he was reinforced by six 
thousand Spanish veterans from the Armada ; and yet 
in these last instructions to Medina Sidonia it was left 
to his discretion whether these veterans should be sent. 
Thus all the elements of discord existed before the 
great fleet sailed. An almost monkish discipline was 
enjoined on the fleet by the King, and it is clear that 
Philip himself had worked his spirit into a state of 
fervour which made him believe that sanctimonious- 
ness would compensate for the absence of practical 
provisions for success. Saints' names alone formed the 
watchwords, Jesus for Sunday, the Holy Ghost for 
Monday, the Holy Trinity for Tuesday, and so on ; 
whilst the ships' boys were to chant the Salve and 
good-morrow at daybreak and the Ave Maria at 
sunset on every vessel. 

On the 25th April, 1588, the sacred banner was 
delivered to the Duke by Philip's Viceroy, the Arch- 
duke Albert, in Lisbon Cathedral ; and thence with 
raised crosses, swinging censers, flaming candles, and 
chanting priests it was borne before the whole kneel- 
ing hosts of the Armada in the great square of the 
city. And then, sped by prayers and psalms of roga- 
tion, the Armada, with its cargo of hopes and fears, 
tried for a month in vain to get out of the Tagus, with 
a boisterous westerly gale blowing full into the mouth 
of the river. But at length, at the end of May, 1588, 
the fleet got clear out to sea ; the Duke complaining 
to the last of his subordinates and of his ships to the 
King, and praying that God would avert disaster. 
Contrary winds still held the fleet back for a fortnight 
more on the coast, and then, on the 19th June, a 
great storm came and scattered the ships like chaff. 
Some, with the Duke, fled in dire danger to shelter in 



482 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

Corunna, some even were blown within sight of the 
Scilly Isles, and many ran into the Biscay and 
Galician ports. Confusion, utter and complete, over- 
came the host. Many of the ships were crippled, 
spars broken, sails split, and planks started. Pro- 
visions were spoilt ; the long delay had consumed 
stores and water ; and again Medina Sidonia appealed 
to the King to abandon an enterprise which seemed 
so ill-starred, and again he clamoured for more stores, 
more men, more money, more arms. 

On the 24th June, in despair, he wrote to the King 
as follows : " When your Majesty ordered me to take 
command of this fleet I gave many reasons why I 
ought not to undertake it. ... I saw that it was 
going against a powerful nation, which had the help 
of its neighbours, and that the task would require a 
much larger force than that collected at Lisbon ; I 
therefore declined the command. . . . Since then the 
ships have suffered much, and the fleet is now greatly 
inferior to that of the English ; the crews are weakened 
by sickness, and numbers fall ill daily in consequence 
of bad food. . . . The provisions are rotten, the 
water is stinking, and our stores will not last two 
months under the most favourable conditions." ^ Then 
he goes on to say that all the power of Spain, all the 
King's hopes, credit, and prestige, are entrusted to this 
Armada, and its loss would mean irretrievable ruin. 
"It would be unwise," he says, " to run such a risk 
even with equal forces, but much more so with such 
an inferior force as we have now, the men inex- 
perienced, and the officers, on my conscience I assure 
your Majesty, hardly any of them knowing or capable 
of doing their duty. . . . Believe me, your Majesty, 
^ " La Armada Invincible." 



PHILIP RASH AT LAST 483 

we are very weak ; pray do not allow any one to 
persuade you otherwise." The timid Duke was full 
of forebodings, but Don Pedro de Vald^s and other 
officers were writing at the same time to the King, 
impatiently scoffing at the delay, and Philip sternly, 
almost angrily, ordered Medina Sidonia to carry out 
his instructions without further parley — to patch up 
and collect his vessels again and sail up the Channel, 
with God's blessing, to conquer the heretics who were 
holding the fair land of England. 

And thus Philip the Prudent cast to the winds all 
the dictates of prudence. Parma, at all events, could 
not be accused either of ineptitude or of cowardice, and 
yet he had twice solemnly warned his uncle to abandon 
his plan, now that all Europe knew of it and was pre- 
pared to frustrate it. If Philip had determined (as indeed 
he had) to run all risks and depend upon the special 
interposition of Providence in his favour, it was surely 
the height of folly to entrust the task, upon the success 
of which the whole future of his cause depended, to 
two unwilling commanders, both of whom deliberately 
foretold failure. It was, perhaps, impossible for him 
to dismiss Parma at short notice ; but the letter from 
Medina Sidonia quoted above would amply have justi- 
fied either his recall or the abandonment of the enter- 
prise for which he, the commander, foretold defeat. 
Like Villeneuve at Trafalgar, Medina Sidonia was a 
beaten man before he met his enemy ; but Philip, 
blind to all worldly considerations and steadfast in 
his faith in himself and his cause, elected to strike 
his supreme blow against Elizabeth with an obsolete 
and faulty weapon wielded by a feeble hand. 

With plentiful prayers and the blessings of Church- 
men, with abundant copies of Father Parsons's 



484 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

allocutions to his countrymen on the blessings of 
Spanish rule, and Cardinal Allen's exhortations in 
favour of the old faith, the Armada sailed. The 
victuals were scanty and bad, the water was putrid, 
the craft overcrowded and fever-haunted ; the admiral 
was faint-hearted and prophesied disaster ; but the 
crank ships, with strained spars and gaping seams, 
though they looked so brave and loomed so high, 
sailed out of Corunna on the 12th July, 1588, doomed 
beforehand to disaster, which only a miracle from on 
high could avert from them. How the disaster fell 
there is no space here to relate ; but a week's running 
fight up the Channel, and one hopeless battle at bay, 
struck the first irreparable blow at the fable of Philip's 
irresistible power, and the prestige that clung still 
around the name of the Emperor and his son. 

We have followed the process by which circum- 
stances and the personal character of the chief actors 
in the great di'ama had driven Philip, after thirty years 
of diplomacy in trying to win England to his side 
without any concessions on his part, into a violent 
course at last. The result of his over-caution for so 
many years had been that he was forced to be reckless 
after all or fail entirely ; the outcome of his fatal 
desire to win all for himself without risking anything 
was that when the crisis came he had to risk every- 
thing on a losing hazard. Elizabeth was more 
fortunate in the issue than her brother-in-law, but 
hardly more wise. Almost to the day when the 
Armada sighted her coasts she was beguiled into 
a belief that her negotiations with Parma might 
avert war, though Walsingham and the sailors were 
almost in despair at what they saw was the terrible 
risk she ran. She was far more hard-fisted and 



ELIZABETH AND THE ARMADA 485 

parsimonious than Philip, too, when once it was 
brought home to her that she and her people would 
have to fight for the independence of England. Her 
men, unlike those at the bidding of Philip, were full 
of initiative and boldness, though they had to cope 
with material obstacles almost as great as his. All 
was unready in England when the peril loomed near, 
and even if the Queen had been as liberal as she was 
stingy, sufficient stores could not in the circumstances 
have been improvised and concentrated. 

But every one in England, high and low, did his 
best. There was but little of the vapouring self- 
confidence that led the Spanish soldiers into the 
disillusionment which destroyed their nation's potency; 
but the predictions and assurances with regard to 
England of Parsons and the English Jesuits and 
Spanish pensioners, were all signally falsified. The 
moderate English Catholics, who quite conceivably 
might have welcomed the adoption of an English 
Catholic successor to Elizabeth under Spanish 
patronage, were indignant at the Jesuit-Spanish plan 
to foist Philip's daughter upon the throne after 
deposing Elizabeth and submitting the country to 
conquest. The treatment meted out to Englishmen 
in Spain by the Inquisition had given even to 
Catholics no desire to live under a rule which made 
such an institution a branch of Government. So, 
when the time of trial came, the Howards, Catholics 
though they were, and often as they had been parties 
to Philip's plans, fought against him as stoutly as the 
veriest Puritan of them all. A generation had passed 
away since Philip had personally felt the pulse of 
England. Allen, Englefield, and Parsons had not, 
for many years before the Armada sailed, seen with 



486 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 

their own eyes the growing spirit of patriotism which 
under Elizabeth was binding Englishmen as such 
together, independent of their creeds ; and the Jesuit 
Churchmen and pensioned laymen who advised Philip 
that the English people would welcome the men on 
the Armada with open arms as liberators were as the 
blind leading the blind, for they were not in touch 
with nor understood the England that had arisen since 
their time. 

For the rest of Philip's life, ten years, a more 
pressing task even than that of winning England by 
finesse or force claimed his every effort. The murder 
of Henry III. made a Protestant King of France ; and 
to prevent the country from joining the Reforma- 
tion Philip and Spain would have to fight until the 
last dollar was spent and the last Spanish soldier was 
dead. Again, the Infanta was his candidate for the 
Crown of all or a portion of her mother's land ; and, 
as in the case of England, the forces of patriotism in 
the end overrode the differences of creed, and all 
Frenchmen coalesced to oppose foreign aggression. 
Heny IV. " went to Mass," it is true, and that France 
remained a Catholic country through his efforts was 
the only great triumph of Philip's strenuous life. 

From the time when the Armada, or such of the 
ships as escaped the wild Atlantic gales, crept home, 
plague-stricken, battered wrecks, and the cry of mortal 
anguish went up from all Spanish hearts at the 
cruel disappointment of their hopes, Philip, it is true, 
continued to strive against the woman who had beaten 
him. These efforts I have described elsewhere : but 
with no hope of conquering England by frontal 
attack was one little expedition after another with 
infinite difficulty and friction fitted out thenceforward 



FAILURE AND FAITH 487 

in Corunna. For that Philip knew well the time had 
passed, notwithstanding the continued exhortations 
of the Churchmen and pensioned refugees. Thence- 
forward it was his plan to incite Irish Catholics to 
revolt, to render Elizabeth unsafe and uneasy, in 
order to prevent her from aiding Henry of Navarre 
in France ; to look forward to the time when her 
death, by natural or unnatural means, should give 
him a chance of manoeuvring a sovereign apt for his 
purpose upon the throne of England. With the 
failure of Philip's thirty-five years' struggle to gain 
the control of England for his ends under two sister 
Queens, the downfall of his own system and the decay 
of Spain were absolutely inevitable, though the 
tradition of its potency died hard and was maintained 
long after its reality had fled. 

It is bootless to consider what would have been the 
result if Philip's methods had been less rigid, and if 
he could have fought his enemies with their own 
weapons ; for if such had been the case he would not 
have been Philip, and the situation that made the 
long struggle incumbent upon him would never have 
been created. But, though on his agonising death- 
bed in his poor cell at the Escorial, in the autumn of 
1598, he knew that Elizabeth still defied him, and the 
Dutch Protestants repudiated his rule, that wherever 
the yoke of Rome was shaken off it could be imposed 
no more, he still held firmly to his faith beyond all 
earthly evidence, that God in His good way and 
time would send triumphant victory to the cause for 
which He and Philip had fought in partnership — the 
supremacy of Catholicism and the preponderance of 
Spain amongst the nations. 



INDEX 



Alava, Don Frances, Spanish 
ambassador in France, 320-23 

Alba, Duchess of, in England, 84- 
86,88 

Alba, Duke of, 53, 67, 68, 73, 85, 
117, 142, 148, 150, 197, 218, 226, 
231, 232. In Flanders, 258, 265, 
266, 268, 271, 272, 275, 277-78, 
282, 283-88, 297-316, 319, 324, 
327, 330, 333- Retires from 
Flanders, 334. In Portugal, 
372 

Alengon, Duke of, 321, 326, 327, 

342, 345. 350. 352, 358, 361, 370. 
376, 388, 395^6, 399, 422 
Allen, Dr. (Cardinal), 383, 385, 391, 
404, 405, 406, 416, 418, 419, 425, 

432, 457> 458, 459. 471. 484. 485 
Alvarez, Dr., Portuguese ambas- 
sador, 270-7 T 
Anna of Austria, Philip's fourth 

wife, 300 
Antonio, Don, Portuguese Pre- 
tender, 371-73, 375, 379. 380, 
396, 405, 411, 413, 420, 427, 429, 

441. 447. 450 
Armada, the evolution of the, 420, 
421, 425, 427, 431, 432, 447, 448, 

449. 450. 451. 452. 453. 458. 462. 
Orders given to, 466-70, 475- 
78, 479, 480-82. The catas- 
trophe, 483-84 



Arundel, Earl of (Fitzallan), 14, 37, 
40, 62, 67, 174, 281-82, 284-88, 
290, 302, 303 

Arundel, Earl of (Howard), 409, 

439 
Arundell, Charles, 409 
Ashton, 136 



B 

Babington plot, 434-44 

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 163 

Bailly, Charles, 310-12 

Ballard, Father, 434, 435, 439, 440 

Barker, 306 

Bayonne, the interviews at, 230, 
231, 232 

Bazan, Alvaro de (Santa Cruz), 
Admiral, his plan to conquer 
England, 420, 428, 447, 448, 449, 
451,462, 465, 466, 467, 469, 471, 

474. 476 
Beal, clerk of the Council, 441 
Bedford, Earl of, 54, 56, 57, 66m, 

145. 149. 162 
Berga, Father, De Spes' chaplain, 

300 
Bertondona, Martin de, Spanish 

seaman, 58, 476 
Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow, 

239. 363. 364. 366, 383, 384, 391, 

400, 405, 418 
Beton, James, 267, 270 



490 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 



Blanks, the Conspiracy of the, 450 

et seq. 
Bonner, Bishop of London, 113, 

ii5> 123 
Borough, Admiral, 461, 463 
Bothwell, 256 
Boxall, Secretary, 161 
Browne, Sir Anthony (Viscount 

Montagu), 43, 68, 303 
Bruce, Robert, 450, 451-55 



Cadiz, Drake's raid upon, 460-64 

Caithness, Earl of, 382 

Calais, loss of, 151, 157, 168 

Campion, Edmund, Jesuit, 367 

Carew, 46 

Carlos, Don (Philip's son), 54, 135, 
213, 224, 225, 228, 236, 238, 239, 
240 

Castelnau, de la Mauvissiere, 
French ambassador to Scotland, 
250 

Cateau Cambresis, Peace of, 191, 
195, 196 

Catharine de Medici, 197, 210,211, 
226, 229, 231, 287, 303, 320, 326, 
330, 345. 362, 384, 458 

Catharine Grey, 196, 241 

Catholic League, the, 195, 226, 
228, 230, 327, 328, 422 

Catholics, English, under Eliza- 
beth, 200, 227, 228, 233, 246-47, 
261, 271, 280-83, 285-88, 289-92, 
293-95, 298-316, 361, 367-68, 
376, 388, 405, 409, 416, 417, 434, 

435, 439, 440, 485 

Cavalcanti, Guido, 32on 

Cecil, William (Lord Burghley), 9, 
99,149. Elizabeth's minister, 183, 
187, 195. Checkmates Dudley, 
209, 226, 227, 247, 260, 273, 274, 
278, 280, 282, 301, 317, 319, 324, 



336, 345, 348, 358, 371, 374, 379, 

395, 427, 437, 441, 459, 460 
Charles, Archduke, a suitor for 

Elizabeth's hand, 199, 202, 216, 

219, 224, 229, 238, 239 
Charles V. His attempts to gain 

the friendship of England, 2-19. 

His advice to Mary, 17-18. His 

abdication, 132 
Charles IX. of France, 327, 352, 

358 
Chatillon, Cardinal, Huguenot 

leader, 268, 299 
Cheyne, Sir Thomas, 145 
Ciappino Vitelli, Alba's general, 

292, 294 
Clarencius, Mrs., Queen Mary's 

nurse, 40, 78, 179 
Clinton, Lady, 184 
Clinton, Lord, madeLord Admiral, 

157, 162, 163, 167, 170, 225, 278, 

379 
Cobham, Lord, English councillor, 

14, 15, 43, 310 
Cobham, Lord (junior), 465 
Cobham, Henry, Elizabeth's envoy 

to Spain, 307 
Cobham, Thomas, 310 
Coligny, Admiral, 149, 268, 329 
Como, Cardinal of, 401 
Conde, Prince of, 226 
Cordell, Master of the Rolls, 163, 

179 
Cordova, Pedro de, 86 
Council of Trent, proposal by 

Dudley for England to join in, 

203- 10 
Courtenay, Earl, of Devon, 19, 20, 

22, 24, 32-33, 38, 41, 43, 46, 48, 

49,62, 113, 115, 116, 139 
Cranmer, Archbishop, 41, 141 
Crawford, Earl of, 450 
Creighton, Father, Jesuit, 378, 382, 

383, 384, 385, 386, 388, 389, 390 
Crofts, Sir James, 358, 399, 465, 470 
Cumberland, Earl of, 285 



INDEX 



491 



D 

Dacre, Lord, 285, 293,404 

Dale, Dr., Peace Commissioner, 

465 
Daniel, 136 
Darnley, Henry Stuart, Lord, 218, 

221, 226, 235-37, 238-40, 241- 

54, 256 

Dassonleville, Councillor, in Eng- 
land, 173, 184, 278-79 
De Foix, French ambassador, 230, 

231 
Dela, Damian, 345, 348 
Derby, Earl of, 61, 67, 80, 85, 302 
Derby, Earl of (junior), 465 
Desmond Rebellion, 359, 362, 364, 

370, 375> 398 
De Spes. See Gerau de Spes 
D'Este, Cardinal, 421, 426 
Don Juan of Austria, 334-40, 345, 

349-51, 352, 355, 357, 362 
Drake, Sir Francis, 369, 371, 381, 
397, 413, 427, 429, 430, 460, 460- 
64. 465, 479 
Dudley, Lord Henry, 16, 41 
Dudley, Sir Henry, 136, 139 
Dudley, Lord Robert, 199, 202, 
221, 223, 224^ 225, 226. Plots 
against Cecil, 227 (Earl of 
Leicester), 352, 355, 358, 371, 
382, 395, 397, 427, 430, 449, 460 
Dunblane, Bishop of, 457 
Durham House, 43, 170, 199, 217, 
446 

E 

Edward VL, 2, 3, 4. Illness and 

death of, 8-12 
Eglinton, Earl of, 382 
Egmont, Count, h'u embassy to 

England, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 

55, 67, 76 

Elizabeth, Princess, of England, 
19, 20, 38, 39, 41, 46, 48, 49, 61, 
64, 109, no, 113, 115, 116, 122- 



24, 135, 136, 138-41, 156, 164-65- 
Visited by Feria, 166, 174. Ac- 
knowledged Mary's heir, 175. 
Her accession, 181. See also 
Elizabeth, Queen of Eng- 
land 

Elizabeth, Queen of England. Per- 
plexity of Feria, 181-82. Her first 
measures, 183. The problem of 
her marriage, 182, 186. Her 
reception of Philip's offer, 192- 
93. Deceives Quadra, 203-10. 
Her policy towards the Dutch 
Protestants, 221. Her statecraft, 
224. Fresh approaches to Spain, 
226-30. Her danger from Mary 
Stuart, 235-55. Her fear of 
Philip's designs, 258. Her retort 
to Alba's proceedings in the 
Netherlands, 258. Her anger at 
Dr. Man's expulsion from Spain, 
259-62. Seizes the treasure, 275. 
Embargoes Spanish property, 
275-80, 292. Her alarm, 301. 
Her reception of Guaras, 325. 
Friendly with the French,3 26-27, 
Alengons courtship, 327-28. Her 
talk with Guaras, 341. Receives 
Mendoza, 354-60, 370, 374, 379- 
81, 385-91. Draws nearer to 
Spain, 395, 396. Proposal to 
murder her, 401-3. At war 
with PhiHp, 431. Plot to murder 
her, 434-35, 439-41- Tries for 
peace, 445, 459, 466, 470. The 
Armada, 480-84 

Elizabeth of Valois, third wife of 
Philip, 197, 226 

Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, 7, 
108-11, 116, 140, 148, 186 

England reconciled to the Papacy, 
102-8 

Englefield, Sir Francis, 392, 485 

Enriquez, Pedro de, his account 
of England, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90, 
102, III, 112 



492 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 



Eric of Sweden. Offers to marry 
Elizabeth, 165, 176, 186. A suitor 
for Mary of Scotland, 219 



Farnese, Alexander, Duke of 
Parma, 350, 424, 445, 451, 452, 
453W, 462, 465, 470, 471, 472. 
Advocates peace, 475, 479 

Felton, John, 299-300 

Fenner, Captain, 429 

Feria, Count (Duke of), 55, 67, 73, 
86, 151, 153. His dealings with 
Mary and her Council, 153-172. 
Leaves England, 172, 173. Re- 
turns to Mary's deathbed, 177. 
Visits Elizabeth, 166, 178. 
Philip's ambassador to Eliza- 
beth, 181. His bewilderment at 
the changes, 182-84. ^i^ inter- 
views with Elizabeth, 185. His 
action in Madrid, 259, 265, 307W, 

317, 324> 351 

Feria, Countess of (Jane Dormer), 
179,202,316 

Fiesco, 292, 323 

Figueroa, Viceroy, Imperial am- 
bassador, 67, 79, 80, 165 

Fitzwalter, Lord (Earl of Sussex,) 
54, 56. See also Sussex 

Fitzwilliam, George, 316-18 

Fleetwood, Sir William, 343, 347 

Flores, Diego, 478 

Fowler, a Lennox adherent, visits 
Guzman, 235-37 

Francis II. of France, 197 

Frobisher, Captain, 429 



Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Win- 
chester, 26n, 36, 40, 42, 45, 46, 
61, 7i> 75> 94» 95, 103-5, 107, 
115, 130-31 

Geneda, Don Diego, 33, 135 



Gerau de Spes, Spanish ambassa- 
dor, 264. His violent character, 
265-67. Begins plotting at once, 
268-69, 270, 271. Causes seizure 
of English property and stop- 
page of trade, 275. His indiscre- 
tion, 276, 277, 278. Under arrest 
in England, 278-79. Plots with 
Mary Stuart, 280-83, 284-92, 
293. The Ridolfi plot, 297-315. 
Hoodwinked by Hawkins, 316- 
18. His expulsion from England, 

3i9» 375 

German mercenaries for England, 
156, 168, 169 

Gifford, Gilbert, 439, 440, 443 

Giraldi, Portuguese envoy to Eng- 
land, 343-44 

Granvelle, Cardinal de, 4, 21, 99, 

387, 388, 392-93, 394 
Gregory XIII., Pope, 309, 338, 401, 

405, 406, 421, 422, 423 
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 112, 160, 

161, 268 
Grey, Lady Jane. See Jane 
Grey de Wilton, Lord, 145, 151 
Guaras, Antonio de, 35-36, 267, 

322-26,330-33,336-46. Arrested, 

347-49, 357, 359, 375 

Guaras, Gombal de, 357 

Guise, Francis, Duke of, 142, 
143, 148. Captures Calais, 151. 
Death of, 235 

Guise, Henry, Duke of, 365, 366, 
384, sSgn, 390-92, 393, 394, 399, 
401-3, 405-7, 409, 417, 418, 
422, 425, 426, 450, 451, 458 

Guises, the, 200, 210, 211, 232, 234, 
352-53, 445, 457 

Guzman de Silva, Diego. Spanish 
ambassador to England, 222. 
His first interviews with Eliza- 
beth, 225-32. His negotiations 
with Mary Stuart, 235-54. His 
interviews with Elizabeth about 
the expulsion of Dr. Man, 260- 



INDEX 



493 



6i. Begs Philip to recall him, 
262, Presents his successor, 264. 
EHzabeth's grief at his depar- 
ture, 264-65. Leaves England, 
265, 268 

H 

Hamilton, Lord Claude, 440, 450 

Hastings, Lord, 43, 99 

Hatton, Sir Christopher, 370, 371, 
373^382,396 

Havrey, Marquis d', 352 

Hawkins, John, 273, 274, 281. His 
trick on de Spes, 316-18 

Hawkins, William, 273 

Heath, Archbishop, Lord Chan- 
cellor, 141, 15s 

Henrique, Cardinal, King of Por- 
tugal, 362, 372 

Henry VHL, 2, 32 

Henry H. of France, 6, 95, 115, 
139, 142, 188, 194. Death of, 197, 
200 

Henry III, of France, 399, 425, 

455, 456, 457, 486 
Herbert, Dr., Peace Commissioner, 

465 
Herries, Lord, 257, 312 
Hertford, Earl of, 465 
Hey wood. Father, Jesuit, 383 
Hoby, Sir Philip, English envoy, 8 
Holt', Father, Jesuit, 386, 388 
Horn, Count, 67 
Horsey, Governor of the Isle of 

Wight, 274 
Howard, Lord Henry, 388, 399 
Howard, Lord William (Lord 

Eifingham), 43, 44, 61, 63, 64, 

67, 76, 77, 135, 148, 157, 191, 

225, 254 

Howard, Lord Admiral (Charles 

2nd Howard of Effingham), 441 

Huguenots, the, 200, 210, 211, 

226, 230, 232, 268, 273, 320, 326, 
327-29, 353, 358 



Hunsdon, Lord, 441 
Huntly, Earl of, 382, 450, 454 
Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, 33 



Isabel, the Infanta, 458 

J 

James VI, of Scotland, 363, 366, 
377, 378, 382, 384, 386, 387, 400, 
419, 422, 426, 433, 436, 438, 450, 

454, 457, 458, 459 
Jane Grey, 11, 13, 16, 19,41 
Jane the Mad, 56, 120 
Jerningham, Master of the Rolls^ 

163 
Jesuit propaganda in England, 

365, 367, 368, 378, 382, 385, 398, 

400, 419 
Juana, Princess, Philip's sister, 54, 

56, 225 



K 

Kildare, Countess of, 85 
Kingston, Sir Anthony, 136 
Kirkaldy of Grange, 255 
Knollys, Sir Francis, 277^, 441 



Landau, Charles V. at, 2, 3 

La Mole received by Elizabeth, 
327-28 

La Mothe Fenelon, French am- 
bassador, 275, 287, 330, 400 

Leicester, Earl of. See Dudley 

Lennox D'Aubigny (Duke of Len- 
nox), 363, 366, 377, 378, 382, 
389-92, 398, 399, 400 

Lennox, Margaret, Countess of, 
218. Intrigues with Guzman, 
235-37, 238-40, 241, 247, 253 

Lethington, William Maitland, 



494 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 



Laird of (Scottish Secretary), 
213, 214, 215, 218, 234-40 285 

Lewis, Dr. Owen, Bishop of 
Cassano, 433, 457 

London. Rejoices at Mary's ac- 
cession, 14-17. Mary's entry into, 
19. Mary's coronation at, 32, 
34. Wyatt's appeal to, 15, 47. 
Fears of the Spanish match, 34, 
43, 52, 64, 86-go. Philip's State 
entry, 90-92, 93. Ill-feeling 
towards Spaniards, 114, 120 

Loo, Andrea, de, 445, 459 

Lopez, Dr., 373 

Lopez de Padilla, Gutierre, 54 

Lorraine, Cardinal, 216, 226, 231, 
232, 234, 238, 244, 265 

Lumley, Lord, 285, 286, 290, 302, 
303 

M 

Man, Dr., English ambassador in 
Spain, his expulsion, 259, 265 
270 

Marnix, Jacques de (Tholuze), en- 
voy to England, 9 

Martinengo, Abbe, Papal Legate 
for England, 209 

Martin, Sir Roger, Lord Mayor, 
271 

Mary Tudor, Queen of England, 
8, 10, 11-16. Her accession, 17. 
Her reception in London, 19. 
Her acceptance of Philip, 23-29. 
Her anger with Courtenay, 
32-33. Her coronation, 34. 
Pledged to Philip, 40. The 
public announcement of her 
marriage, 45, 47, 48. Anxiety 
for Philip's safety, 51. Her 
meeting with Philip, 76-78. 
The marriage, 80-82. Entry 
into London, 90-92, 95. Re- 
ceives Pole, 102, 109-10. Diffi- 
culties with Elizabeth, 1 16-19. 



Hopes of an heir, 1 19-21, 122, 
123. Philip's absence, 130, 140- 
41. Joy at Philip's return, 144. 
Declares war on France, 147. 
Her grief at the loss of Calais, 
i53> 157- Her poverty, 158-59. 
Her decline and death, 171, 175- 
80 

Mary of Hungary, Regent of the 
Netherlands, 3, 6 

Mary, Queen of Scots, 39, 141, 187, 
193. i97> 200, 211, 213 224, 234, 
236-40. Marries Darnley under 
Philip's patronage, 243-45. 
Her designs against Elizabeth, 
247-54. Rizzio, 256. Mary a 
prisoner, 256, 257. In England, 
262, 268, 269. Her communica- 
tions with de Spes, 277-88, 
293. The Ridolfi plot, 297-315, 
316, 317. Intrigues with Don 
Juan through Guaras, 336, 339- 
40, 345. 349- Fresh plots, 365- 
66, 377> 383-84. 401-3. 410. 
423, 434. Bequeath' s Crown of 
England to Philip, 436. Her 
part in the Babington plot, 444 

Mary of Lorraine, Regent of Scot- 
land, 200 

Mason, Dr., English Councillor, 
14, 15, 16, 99, 100 

Maurice of Saxony, 2 

Maximilian of Austria, 38 

Mayenne, Duke of, 401 

Medina CeH, Duke of, 55, 73, 85, 

3i5«. 317. 331" 
Medina Sidonia, Duke of, 462. To 
command the Armada, 477, 479, 
481. Prays Philip to abandon 
the enterprise, 482 
Melville, Sir James, 254, 285^ 
Mendoza, Bernardino, Spanish am- 
bassador to England, 351, 353- 
54. 355-60. Plots with the 
English CathoHcs, 368-70, 377- 
83, 386-98. His unpopularity 



INDEX 



495 



in London, 398. His con- 
nivance with Tiirockmorton's 
plot, 408. Expulsion from 
England, 410-12. In Paris, 
422-25, 433. Connives at the 
Babington Plot, 434-45. 
Metz, the Emperor's defeat at, 5 
Montmorenci, Constable, 148 
Montmorenci, Jean (de Courrieres), 

envoy to England, 9, 43 
Montrose, Earl of, 450 
Morgan, Thomas, 406, 435 
Morley, Lord, 285 
Morton, the Regent, 365, 366, 377 
Morton, Earl of (Stuart), 450 
Moryson, Sir Richard, addresses 

the Emperor, 1-4 
Murray, James Stuart, Earl of, 245, 
25 1; 255, 256, 284, 285, 287. 



N 

Navarre, Henry of, 326, 328, 399, 

422, 455. 486 

Navas, Marquis de las, 54, 59, 67, 85 

Noailles, Antoine de, French am- 
bassador, 19, 20, 33, 41, 42, 43, 
46, 49, 62, 79, 93-94, 115, 119, 
i34» 135- His plots, 136, 141, 
146, 147, 151 

Nonsuch House, 288 

Norfolk, Duke of (Thomas 
Howard), his plots with Mary 
Stuart, 281-83, 284-88, 289-92, 
293-95» 297, 301, 306, 311-15 

North, the Rising in the, 293-95 
297 

Northampton, Marquis of, 62, 
226 

Northumberland, Duke of, 3, 4, 5, 
7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19 

Northumberland, Earl of, 254, 
277, 281, 285, 290, 293, 293-95 

Northumberland, Earl of (junior), 
409 



Nowell, Dr., Dean of St. Pauls, 3. 

Elizabeth rebukes him, 231 
Nufiez, Dr. Hector, 3987? 

O 

Oquendo, Admiral, 476, 478 
Olivares, Count, Spanish ambas- 
sador in Rome, 421, 423, 426, 
432, 433, 438, 457, 471 
Orange, Prince of, 332-33, 352, 

356, 369. 381, 395 
Osorio, Isabel de, Philip's mistress, 

27.11, 27 

Owen, Hugh, 424 



Pacheco, Don Juan, robbed in 

England, 84 
Paget, William, Lord, 20, 24, 37, 

40, 61, 99, 158, 163, 167 
Paget, Lord (junior), 409 
Paget, Charles, 339, 406, 408, 409, 

434. 435 
Paget, William, 436 
Paget House, 238, 269, 278 
Parry, Elizabeth's controller, 184 
Parsons (or Persons), Father 
Robert, 367, 383, 385, 389, 400, 
404, 405, 406, 407, 416, 417, 419, 
421, 425, 435, 457, 458, 471, 483, 

485 
Paul IV., Pope (Caraffa), 121, 141, 

142, 150 
Paulet, Sir Amyas, 345 
Paz, Luis de, 219, 236 
Peace negotiations with Parma, 

445. 459. 465. 466, 470 
Peckham, Sir W., 136 
Pembroke, Earl of, 14, 61, 71, 80, 

82, 97; 145. 225, 290 
Pembroke, Countess of, 85 
Pescara, Marquis of, 55, 67 
Petre, Sir W., Secretary of State, 

14. 24, 37, 40, 97 



495 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 



Philip II., 6. To marry Mary, 
21-31, 37, 38. The conditions 
of his marriage, 42, 44-46, 50. 
His coming to England, 52-65. 
His presents to Mary, 54. His 
demeanour in England, 65, 66. 
Arrival and first sight of Mary, 
66-80. State entry into London, 
90-92. Receives Pole, 101-105. 
His attitude towards Elizabeth, 
1 16-17. Leaves England, 125- 
26. His influence on English 
policy, 129, 133. His attempts 
to draw England into war, 143. 
Visits England, 144. Obtains 
armed English aid, 145. Eng- 
land joins him in the war, 147. 
His last farewell to Mary, 148. 
The war and the English, 151- 
60, 162-63, 164. His friend- 
ship with Elizabeth, 166. He 
proposes to Elizabeth, 188-91. 
His new policy, 195. Alliance 
with France, 198-99. Its in- 
efficiency, 200. His intrigue 
with Lord R. Dudley, 203-10. 
His reception of Scottish ap- 
proaches, 215. His pohcy in 
the Netherlands, 220. Patron- 
ises Darnley, 235-40, 241-54. 
His determination to crush the 
Netherlands, 258. Adopts a 
stronger policy towards Eng- 
land, 263. Seizure of his 
treasure, 272-77. Stops trade, 
278-79. Intrigues with Mary 
Stuart, 280-83, 288. Accepts 
Ridolfi plot, 308, 313, 314. His 
claim to Portugal, 362, 372. His 
attitude towards Guise's plots, 
402, 407, 408. Resolved upon 
war at last, 415, 421, 426. His 
claim to the Crown of England, 
436, 437. His doubts of the 
Babington plot, 441-43. Plans 
the Armada, 448-49, 450, 451-56, 



457-58, 459, 466-74. His ob- 
stinacy and the result, 483. 
His failure, 487 

Pickering, Sir William, 168 

Pole, Arthur, plots with Quadra, 
217, 255« 

Pole, Cardinal Reginald, 19, 34, 
95, 98, 99. In England, 100-4, 
114, 125, 130, 141, 143, 146, 15s, 
170. His death, 179 

Portugal, Philip's claim to, 362, 

37i> 372, 396 
Primrose, the attack upon the, 

428 
Protestant conspiracies against 

Mary, 136, 146. See also Wyatt 



Q 

Quadra, Bishop Alvaro. Philip's 
ambassador in England, 196, 
198, 199, 200. Hoodwinked by 
Dudley, 202-10. Scottish ap- 
proaches to, 213 et seq. His 
death, 219 



R 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 440«, 446, 

447 

Randolph, English agent in Scot- 
land, 249, 255 

Randolph, Major, 170?^ 

Ratcliff, Egremont, 342 

Recalde, Martinez de, 476, 478 

Religious persecution, 96, 1 13-15, 
123, 128 

Renard, Simon. Imperial ambas- 
sador, 9-18. Proposes Philip 
for Mary, 21-31, 33, 37, 48, 49, 
50, 51, 61,62, 63, 65, 71, 113, 114, 
122, 128 

Requesens, Viceroy of Flanders, 

334. 337 
Ridley, Bishop, 41 



INDEX 



497 



Ridolfi, Rodolfo, 281, 297, 304, 

306-11,318,375 
Rizzio, 256 
Robsart, Amy, Lady R. Dudley, 

202, 203 
Rochester, Sir R., 154, 163 
Rome, the Armada intrigues in, 

421,426,457 
Ross, Bishop of, 285, 287, 289, 

298-99. 302, 304. 310. 311 
Ross, 306 

Rutland, Earl of, 164 
Ruy Gomez, Philip's favourite, 55, 

67. 72, 78. 92 



St. Bartholomew, 328-30 

St. Quintin, battle of, 148, 150 

St. Quintin, English at the battle 

of, 149. 159 
Sanders, Dr., Papal Legate in Ire- 
land, 364 
Sarmiento de Gamboa, 446-47 
Schef yne, envoy to England, 9, 1 1 
Sebastian, King of Portugal, 362 
Semple, Colonel, 450 
Seton, Lord, 382 
Shan O'Neil, 217, 256 
Shrewsbury, Earl of, 14, 16, 61, 67, 

97, 302, 423 
Sidney, Sir H., 202, 203, 210 
Sidney, Lady Mary, 199, 202 
Sixtus v., Pope, 423, 426, 432, 433, 

438. 457. 459. 471 
Spaniards, discontent of, 83-90, 

102, III, 112, 120 
Spinola, Benedict, Genoese banker 

in London, 272, 273, 274 
Stafford, Thomas, his abortive 

rebellion, 146, 147 
Stanley, Sir William, 439, 441, 450 
Story, Dr., 303 
Strange, Lord, 43, 82 
Stukeley, English traitor, 301, 362 
Supremacy, Act of, 194 

KK 



Sussex, Earl of, 61, 153, 157, 293, 
342, 370, 371, 373, 379 



Tassis, Spanish Ambassador in 

France, 383, 384, 389, 392, 400, 

401, 403, 405, 410, 418 
Throckmorton, Francis, 408, 409, 

416 
Treasure, the seizure of Philip's, 

271-77. 321-26, 331, 332 
Tremayne, 136 
Tresham, 377 



U 

Uniformity, Act of, 194 



Valdes, Pedro de, 478, 483 
Vargas-Mexia, Spanish ambas- 
sador in France, 364-65, 366;? 



W 

Walsingham, Sir Francis, 328, 358, 
397. 407. 409> 410. 427. 434. 44^. 
443.444 

Wentworth, Lord, Governor of 
Calais, 151 

Westmorland, Earl of, 97, 147, 

174. 293. 375. 404 
Wilkes, English envoy to Spain, 

350-51 
Williams, Sir John (Lord Williams 

of Thame), 67, 68 
Wilson, Dr., 345 
Winchester, the marriage at, 72- 

84 
Winchester, Marquis of, 86, 97 
Winchester House, 287, 302« 
Worcester, Earl of, 303 



498 TWO ENGLISH QUEENS AND PHILIP 



Wyatt's rebellion, 47, 48, 49, 61, 

62, 90 
Wynter, Admiral, 273, 429 



Yaxley, Francis, sent to Philip 
by the English and Scottish 
Catholics, 248-54 



York, the Conference of, 269, 284 
York, Roland, 450 



Zayas, Secretary, 305, 306, 313, 

336, 346, 347. 359. 363 
Zweveghem, Flemish envoy, 324, 
326 



Ub6 ©resbam press, 

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, 
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